Ted Kyle on the Impact of the Diabetes Prevention Program

Ted Kyle, RPh, MBA, principal at ConscienHealth, explained that in order to prevent diabetes, a patient’s health-related risks needs to be addressed, and part of these risks stem from obesity. He added that a program like Medicare’s diabetes prevention program is exactly the tool the curb this progression.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What impact could Medicare’s decision to pay for diabetes prevention have?

Well I think it makes it really plain that obesity care is just the flipside of the coin of chronic disease prevention. So some people, prevention is something that people value greatly and if we can prevent diabetes, great. Well the way you prevent diabetes is to care for someone’s health-related risks of obesity. And the diabetes prevention program just went through this really outstanding demonstration of, I think it was like $2600 per Medicare member saved to the Medicare program by preventing the progression of prediabetes to diabetes really by providing obesity care services.