Dr Jaime Davidson: The System Is Disruptive to Patients With Diabetes

Changes with health plans can be disruptive to patients with diabetes who face changes in supplies and medications that make it difficult to manage their disease, said Jaime A. Davidson, MD, FACP, MACE, professor of medicine, Touchstone Diabetes Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Transcript

What challenges have your Medicare patients had in ordering diabetes supplies and has it affected their health?

Actually, it’s disruptive. I call the system disruptive. Because every year there are changes. We have an article actually that shows for supplies, especially for glucose sticks and meters, they decided to have a big change and when the patients receive the new meters or the new strips they didn’t know how to use them, they didn’t trust them, they didn’t use them, and actually that was very disruptive and people got out of control.

And the same is true for medications. Every year they change plans. It’s not just Medicare, it’s plans that we need to check on a yearly basis because this plan looks better. And then if one of the patients is taking, for example, one type of insulin, the new plan may not have it. And then they will exchange from a different insulin. And then, there’s a lot of confusion.

So, I call that part of the system disruptive. Economically, they think they save money, but at the end it costs us all more money, because the patients don’t do as well.