A Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Metabolic Center to Treat Patients with Obesity in the Allegheny Health Network.

Abstract

Multidisciplinary treatment approaches are common for chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, but obesity treatment remains largely siloed. Increasing efficiency in obesity treatment is crucial to improving financial and clinical outcomes. The Allegheny Health Network established a metabolic center consisting of bariatric surgeons, specialists in bariatric medicine, and endocrinologists specializing in diabetes care, who together developed an obesity treatment algorithm to address this need and to improve clinical outcomes through research, continuing education, and primary care outreach. This correspondence provides insights into the development and implementation of the metabolic center and presents the algorithm used to select a patient's obesity treatment based on their individual phenotype, characteristics, and contraindications. The Alleghany Health Network may be used as a model for the necessary development of similar comprehensive, multidisciplinary obesity specialty centers.