Kellie Rodriguez: Diabetes Education Is Critical

Diabetes is a self-managed disease, which makes the role of diabetes education crucial in order for patients to succeed in managing their disease, said Kellie Rodriguez, RN, MSN, MBA, CDE, director, Global Diabetes Program, Parkland Health & Hospital System.

What is the number one thing you would want payers to understand about diabetes education?

That’s is critical. Diabetes education is a critical part for patient success for person-centered care. Diabetes is a self-managed disease. They don’t manage diabetes in their healthcare visits, they manage diabetes in between their healthcare visits. So, it requires a person with diabetes to have the knowledge, the skills, and the tools they need to be successful in all the different realms of self-care management that is required. You can’t do that from a pamphlet. You can’t do that from verbal information, and I think sometimes there is confusion between what is information and what is education, and from an education perspective, it’s very much a mutual shared care process. There’s thorough assessment piece to that and the education we provide is very tailored to the individual, both in terms of literacy as well as skillset. And I don’t think that always occurs.

So, I think the other aspect in relation to diabetes education, it is a critical need, but right now it’s very dependent on a referral-based process for diabetes self-management education if we’re looking for reimbursement. So, that referral need really does limit access, because it does require a person to be getting a referral from a provider, although they should be seeing their provider, it’s an added step that’s needed in order to get that referral to be able to do the diabetes self-management education that’s required. So, I know that’s certainly an effort that everyone looks at to see if we’re able to simplify the process so that people with diabetes can get what they need, when they need, and how they need.