Virtual Shared Medical Appointments (VSMAs) for Healthy Lifestyles

Why is this important?

Primary care clinicians and specialists – and health systems as a whole – are burdened by the care of a wide range of chronic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, heart disease, hypertension, anxiety, depression, and more. This is partly driven by the shortage of clinicians to see patients and is compounded by the fact that the standard of care is an inefficient model of infrequent “1-to-1” interactions between providers and patients. Virtual Shared Medical Appointments (VSMAs), in which 1 provider can treat and bill for up to 10 patients at a time, are an effective care delivery strategy leveraging “1-To-Many” efficiencies. VSMAs are a widely underutilized, yet growing, revenue-generating tool for effective chronic disease care.

The assets

Virtual Shared Medical Appointments (VSMAs) are an efficient, revenue-generating, care delivery model for chronic disease care. The MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program has developed, researched, and scaled VSMAs focused on hypertension, pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes mellitus, insomnia, and more – it is the largest VSMA program in the country. The MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program has 17 trained primary care providers leading almost 30 VSMAs monthly.

There are two immediate directions for commercialization:

• Licensing MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program VSMA curricula and implementation guides combined with institutional consulting by MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program team members
• Delivering VSMA programming, including those developed by the MGH Healthy Lifestyle 

Capabilities

The MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program VSMA curricula incorporate national guidelines and recommendations for chronic disease prevention and treatment through healthy lifestyle changes. Patient education materials are built into a PowerPoint slide deck that a clinician presents to patients in a 60-minute VSMA. There is also clear facilitator guidance on how to conduct individual patient check-ins after the educational component, which are then used by providers to document and bill for each patient encounter in the exact same way as a 1-to-1 visit in a clinic.

Because providers can bill for 10 patients per hour, as opposed to 2 or 3 in a standard clinic, providers can generate up to 5x revenue. As a result, VSMA curricula offer time-tested patient education materials and clinician guidance for promoting healthy lifestyle changes and generating significantly more revenue than standard care.

The opportunity

The MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program has paved the way for commercializing VSMAs.

VSMAs can be used to:

• Improve care for a wide range of chronic diseases
• Generate more revenue than standard care
• Increase patient access to clinicians and practices
• Promote provider joy

Today, a primary care provider or specialist sees 5-10 patients in a 4-hour clinical session. Replacing that session with 2 VSMAs would increase the number of patients (and billable visits) to 20 while simultaneously reducing the provider time dedicated to clinical care in half. This model works well in any clinical setting where providers are currently providing inefficient 1-to-1 outpatient care.

Evidence

There is 30 years of research – and hundreds of articles – on the benefits of SMAs in a wide range of conditions including obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, heart failure, and women’s health. SMAs have been shown to improve health outcomes, increase patient access, reduce health care utilization, and promote provider joy.

The MGH Healthy Lifestyle Program has led the way in studying VSMAs, under the leadership of Medical Director Jacob Mirsky, MD, MA, DipABLM. Recent research has shown reductions in home-blood pressure readings as well as patient-reported improvements in weight, stress levels, nutrition, sleep, physical activity, and more.

Recent research has shown reductions in home-blood pressure readings,¹ as well as patient-reported improvements in weight, stress levels, nutrition, sleep, physical activity, and more².

¹Hypertension Control and Medication Titration Associated With Lifestyle Medicine Virtual Group Visits and Home Blood Pressure Monitoring - Jacob B. Mirsky, Tiffany X. V. Bui, Connor B. Grady, Jaclyn A. Pagliaro, Ami Bhatt, 2022 (sagepub.com)

²Lifestyle Medicine Virtual Group Visits: Patient Attendance and Perceived Benefits - Jacob Mirsky, Suzanne Brodney, Veronica Boratyn, Anne N. Thorndike, 2023 (sagepub.com)

Ideal strategic partnership

We are willing to explore all forms of commercialization, including a NewCo with a Venture partnership, co-development, or out-licensing to an existing platform/user.