Reported, treatments for diabetics are estimated to cost the U.S healthcare system as much as $322 billion per year and affect nearly 30 million people. To further discuss caring for the diabetic population, leading experts gathered to release the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation’s (NEHI) www.nehi.net White Paper titled “Better Use of Medicines in Diabetes Care: Five Critical Ways to Improve Care”.
The paper outlines the challenges patients with diabetes face and provides innovative solutions to meet the needs of these patients. Susan Dentzer, President and CEO of NEHI, discussed some of the challenges diabetics face when using medications.
To totally support the use of technology, the paper encourages CMS www.cms.gov and the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT www.hhs.gov/healthit to encourage the use of health IT and health data exchange to provide for optimal medical use.
The paper reports that most prescribing use is still done without benefit of hard data on a patient’s actual adherence and persistence. Quality indicators linked to provider payments as in the new quality payment program under Medicare, should encourage providers to adopt such tools as computerized alerts. This would make it possible to find out if patients have filled their prescriptions.
Kaiser Permanente www.kaiserpermanente.org and Geisinger Health System www.geisinger.org approaches to medication management include the need to assemble comprehensive data. For example, Kaiser Permanente’s first-fill alerts, are channeled through their EHR system from their pharmacies directly to the care team to spot gaps in adherence to medication.
Murray Aitken, Executive Director for the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics www.imshealth.com mentioned that the IMS Institute published a study in July 2016 titled “Improving Type 2 Diabetes Therapy Adherence and Persistence in the U.S”.
This study refers to how the wealth of data can provide an opportunity to perform predictive analytics. However, the full leverage of data in the U.S and in the Medicare population has yet to be realized. The study also reports that there is still significant opportunities for predictive analytics within Type 2 diabetes to improve therapy adherence.
A panel discussion was held at the event to discuss problems facing the diabetic community and solutions needed to deal with the technology needed to tailor medication adherence strategies, how to optimize patient self-management, account for quality improvement, and most importantly reduce the cost burden on patients and payers.
Panel experts included:
- Tom Hubbard, Vice President of Policy Research at NEHI www.nehi.net
- Natalie Aboubechara, PharmD Kaiser Permanente www.kaiserpermanente.org
- Kam L. Capoccia, Associate Professor, PharmD at Western New England University College of Pharmacy www.wne.edu
- Lawrence Kocot, Principal, KPMG Center for Healthcare Regulatory Insight www.kpmg-institutes.com
- Matthew Pickering PharmD, Associate Director of Research and Quality Strategies, Pharmacy Quality Alliance http://pqalliance.org