A New Way of Approaching Treatment for Diabetics

One in ten Americans is Diabetic, 9% of the population or 29 million people, and $245 billion a year is spent caring for people suffering from the illness, according to Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, Executive Director of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers.

"The Merck Foundation funded a $15 million initiative nationally in five cites across the country to figure out what works in the real world to improve care for Diabetics," said Dr. Brenner. "It was the Alliance To Reduce Disparities in Diabetes recognizing that minority communities and poor communities, urban and rural communities, are disproportionately affected by Diabetes and often get a poorer quality of care."

In underserved African-American communities, it can be more than double the rate, according to Brenner. "So Camden, New Jersey is where we see the epicenter of this epidemic and we see the impact on patients," he said.

Diabetics can suffer from blindness, unnecessary amputations, and heart attacks that could have been prevented.

"The initiative in Camden and the other sites across the country funded by Merck, seeks to stop doing rescue medicine. We spend a lot of money on hospitals and emergency rooms, and move services out into the community," noted Brenner.

That way Diabetics can get education in the language they speak, such as those who are Spanish-speaking, right in their communities and get help learning how to self-manage their illness.

"Learning about healthy diets, exercise, quitting smoking, and also working with their primary care providers to make sure that they're family doctor and the staff are working in a team-based model to be able to make sure those patients can get access to care and the kind of care they need," said Brenner.

Brenner points out, people who don't suffer from Diabetes are indirectly impacted by it. "If they have to pay more for their employee contribution at work for their health benefits, it's because we're not doing basic blocking and tackling of health care very well.

The U-S spends to $2.8 trillion on health care, twice as much as other countries, according to Brenner, who said we're not getting our money's worth, especially in New Jersey which is one of the most expensive states in the country for health care services.

"We can rescue you, we can put you in the intensive care unit, pull you back from the brink of death, but we don't do our basic primary care prevention, blocking and tackling in health care very well," added Brenner.

Spending health care dollars smarter is the focus of new initiatives in treating Diabetes in the future.

"In Medicaid all over the country we often can't get patients Diabetic Education, so we can get your legs cut off, we can treat your blindness, we can put a stent in your heart; very expensive things-$50,000- $100,000 procedures, but we don't spend $300-$400 making sure that you've been educated in how to care for you Diabetes," pointed out Brenner.