Closing Diabetes Care Gaps

Nov 18, 2021
Andrea Amelse

Diabetes care often faces numerous challenges, including patient adherence to screenings and understanding of the condition’s implications. By recognizing these significant gaps and the barriers that prevent patients from taking crucial steps in their care, we can guide them toward becoming more proactive advocates for their health. Leveraging advanced tools like conversational AI for healthcare and Natural Language Understanding, mPulse uniquely supports each patient in navigating their diabetes journey, ensuring personalized and effective care.

We’ll discuss these solutions that bridge the gaps in diabetes care:

SMS Messaging: Using tailored conversations
IVR & Email: Catering to those with a landline
Streaming health content: video and podcast learning proven to educate your patients.

Background

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 34 million Americans have diabetes, and 88 million are prediabetic. Despite being one of the most common diseases in the U.S., it is still widely misunderstood. Providing education and resources to help those living with diabetes is critical to improving quality measures, managing diabetes, and preventing poor outcomes.

Adherence to diabetes medications alone reduces over 1 million emergency room visits annually, which accounts for approximately $8.3 billion in annual health spending.

Proper management of diabetes can be shown through data captured from routine blood work, A1c tests, specialist visits, prescription refills, and diabetic eye exam claims. However, many patients do not know they need to complete these visits or understand why they are important.

How to engage the hard-to-reach diabetes patients

You need to meet patients where they are. Through implementing a tailored omnichannel approach, you can engage with each patient in the ways they prefer while uncovering their barriers to care. This will help extend your reach, improve engagement at scale, and collect population insights to inform your enterprise strategy.

Each of your diabetes patients is on a different journey. Addressing the correct gaps and identifying each patient’s unique barriers will yield greater self-efficacy.

Using tailored health engagement to bridge gaps in diabetes care

SMS Messaging

Example:

Diane is a Type 1 Diabetic who is a new patient. Through SMS messaging, we can identify her barriers and provide her with care management to help support her and provide her with education on nutrition and resources to help her maintain routine care visits.

“At age 14, I was diagnosed with Type 1. My parents watched over and cared for me, but when I lived alone, I didn’t take care of my diabetes. I wasn’t checking my sugars and ate anything I wanted, whenever. I didn’t want to be the diabetic girl with her medical bag.” – Diane J. Type 1 Diabetic.

Interactive Voice Response and email

Example:

Charlotte is also a Type 1 Diabetic whose provided phone number is a landline. Through IVR and email, we can connect her to education on the importance of routine diabetic eye exams with a CTA (call-to-action) to schedule with her optometrist.

“I’ve been a type 1 diabetic for 30 years, and my hypo symptoms have changed. The first thing that happens is my vision starts to become abstract, and I have hallucinations; it’s terrifying! I don’t know if this is common or not cause it never used to happen to me during hypos.” – Charlotte L. Type 1 Diabetic.

mPulse, a digital health engagement solution provider, uses conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Understanding to fill gaps in diabetes care by overcoming barriers and providing the right support through the right channel to build trust with each of your patients. We deliver personalized interactions that inspire health literacy and behavior change over time.

The importance of health education and literacy

An essential part of building relationships with patients is providing more than appointment reminders, test results, and claims status updates. While tests and appointments are strong indicators that the patient is receiving recommended routine care, the management of diabetes goes beyond the doctor’s office. Living a healthy lifestyle with diabetes is just as essential as maintenance visits, especially when it comes to diet, exercise, and mental health. Investing in health and well-being resources, programs, and education throughout each patient’s health journey drives meaningful behavior change.

“People living with diabetes tend to focus on diet and meds (necessary, of course) that I think maybe we forget other important tools in this fight. I have found that stress, like an argument, financial worry, depression, etc., affects my bs. I’d love to hear some successful stress reducers that can help.” – Joey S. Type 2 Diabetic.

The Big Know is mPulse Mobile’s health education streaming solution. Our team of instructional writers and designers produces broadcast-quality content designed to inspire health literacy at scale. We leverage the expertise of nationally recognized health experts to teach video and podcast learning experiences that are proven to engage and educate your patients.

In addition to condition-specific content, we offer holistic well-being education that teaches the basics of living your healthiest life, with wide-ranging topics that include building resiliency, HSA planning, eating well, yoga, mental health, and more. Discover our content library by visiting The Big Know.

Dr. Reed Tuckson, a Doctor, Health Executive, and author, hosts our LiveWell Diabetes Podcast. In each podcast episode, he hosts a different health expert to discuss specific wellness topics related to managing diabetes, including eating well, movement, and understanding the science behind Type 2 Diabetes.

Listen to the podcast here: https://mpulse.thebigknow.com/home/audio-series/getbeing-podcast-livewell-diabetes/overview

Enroll in mPulse’s Newsletter to be notified when our Diabetes Essentials video series, taught.

by Ranelle Kirchner, launches in 2022.

Reimagining Health Engagement

mPulse Mobile partners with over 100 leading healthcare organizations and initiates 500+ million omnichannel conversations annually. As the leader in digital health solutions, including conversational AI, we help build relationships with your consumers that go beyond the transaction to inspire self-efficacy and health outcomes at scale.