← Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes
Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes
T1D help in real-time: StrideMD offers 24/7 remote monitoring
00:33:04
Remember that ad : I’ve fallen and I can’t get up? do we need a life alert for type 1 diabetes? I’m talking to the folks behind StrideMD – a Florida based healthcare company that is using remote monitoring to alert their clients, and event...
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- [00:05]
A
This week on Diabetes Connections. Remember that old ad, I've fallen and I can't get up. Do we need a life alert for type 1 diabetes? I'm talking to the folks behind Stride MD, a Florida based healthcare company that's using remote monitoring to alert their clients and even notify emergency contacts and paramedics if needed. How does it work? Who is it for and would you consider it? This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your healthcare provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I am your host, Stacey Sims. I'm always so glad to have you here. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. Public service announcement. Mother's Day is this Sunday, so there's your reminder right there. Every mom wants something a little bit different. I always wanted to be left alone and that was very tough to do when my kids were little because you can't tell your kids who want to make you breakfast in bed that mommy would really like to be by herself and she's considering actually checking into a hotel for the weekend so she can be by herself. I get that time to myself now. Certainly not when my kids were little. But all of that to say I do have a couple of promotions for Mother's Day. You can use the promo code mothersday to save on the world's worst diabetes mom book series that is in the show notes. I'll link it all up, but it's not on Amazon. That's only on our website. I can't discount on Amazon. And we do have paperback and audiobook available there. But use the promo code mothersday to save on that award winning book series. Yeah, we won best nonfiction, a national award for the first book. And I still hear really good feedback about both of those books every day. I don't talk about them too much anymore, but you know, good way to fight the perfection myth around diabetes. And you can also use that same promo code to save on mom's night out. I know it's really hard to think about the fall right now. We'll be in Minneapolis in September. We'll be in Phoenix in October. But it will be here before you know it. And our early bird specials are gonna end soon. These events are so much fun and these two in the fall are shaping up to be amazing. We have a lot of fun surprises in store. So. So please do not miss and an early happy Mother's Day to all the moms. All right, so my guest this week is Stride MD Chief Operating Officer Scott Hosbin. This company's based in Florida. Right now, they are only in operation there, but they do hope to expand and they are an official partner with Dexcom. This is so interesting to me. You know, the life alert, I've fallen and I can't get up reference was the first thing that came to my mind when I heard about this. But all kidding aside, that's a great service, and I think something like this makes a lot of sense for some people. I have a good friend whose mother was diagnosed with type one in her 60s, and, you know, she's in her 80s now, and she still lives independently. She's doing great, but my friend is always concerned about her going low and nobody being there to help her. So what do you think? Would this be a good option? Is this something you would consider? My conversation with Scott Hosbin from stridemdash right after this. I've been talking about integration for years, and it's just been wonderful to see it all happening. Dexcom G6 is part of Tandem Diabetes Control IQ system and part of the Omnipod 5 system. My son has been using Control IQ for more than four years now. These systems are really amazing. He sleeps better and the system has his back when he doesn't get his meal bolus exactly right. As a mom, I will never stop worrying, but I worry a lot less. We all just think about diabetes less, which is really amazing. Learn more. Go to diabetes-connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo. Scott, welcome to Diabetes Connections. Really glad to talk to you and learn more about this. Thanks for being with me.
- [03:55]
B
No, thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. Stacy.
- [03:58]
A
Yeah. Before we jump in, would you mind just telling me a little bit about stridemd high level, what it is that you do?
- [04:04]
B
Yeah. So stridemd, we're. We're a national telehealth platform. We're licensed in all 50 states, and we really focus primarily on remote patient monitoring of patients with diabetes.
- [04:16]
A
You have worked in the diabetes space for a long time, though. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
- [04:20]
B
Correct. So, you know, the last year I've been here helping scale that and leading our efforts, we've been also acquiring brick and mortar endocrinology centers throughout Florida. We. Before this year, I spent about 17 years at a company called Dexcom that makes continuous glucose monitors.
- [04:36]
A
What'd you do at Dexcom? We're very familiar with Dexcom.
- [04:38]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And most people are in that diabetes space. So, you know, and it was in a great adventure. So even prior to Dexcom, you know, I worked in a number of products that were new to market, sort of that would be groundbreaking. Was really excited about the Dexcom opportunity. And the interesting thing back then when Dexcom first started is everyone in the space was like, don't take the job, don't go there. This, this isn' going to work. This is bad. But I couldn't stop thinking, well, what if, you know, what if someone really could continuously monitor, you know, glucose levels? This is groundbreaking. You know, there's, there's insulin and now you have cgm. If they could get this, you know. So needless to say, I went there and started back when it's, you know, we were still selling these out of our trunk for cash pay. There was no insurance coverage. You'd meet people at their homes and their cats are jumping all over you and you're, you know, you're trying to show them how it works and what it is and really focused on moving that technology through the adoption curve over those 17 years. And it's, you know, that took its course through everywhere. I mean, and you needed to get insurance coverage, you needed to get the physicians to buy in, you needed to help, you know, patient awareness. Then there's pharmacy coverage, hospital use, you know, just even getting hospitals. For a number of years there was an issue with, with patients would be going into the emergency room and first thing they do is throw out their continuous glucose monitors when they, and they take em off. So just even raising awareness. Hey, don't throw those out. Those are really important pieces of equipment.
- [06:08]
A
Yeah.
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B
Wow.
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A
So how did that kind of lead you to what you're doing now?
- [06:13]
B
Yeah, had been really interested in just, you know, personal passion around telehealth and, you know, the diagnostic space, these remote diagnostics and that. You know, I just saw that as the vision of healthcare in the future. If we're gonna make things more efficient, we need these to remotely monitor folks and to be able to make proactive care. And had been consulting a few different companies just through networking and helping folks. After being through so many product development cycles and bringing it to market. You know, you meet a lot of people and have a lot of information to share. So had worked with these Stride MD folks a bit and just talking to them about going towards using continuous glucose monitors because originally they were just using cellular blood glucometers and you know, had walked and talked to them about including the CGMs and really was watching them get sort of their critical mass and it got To a point where I, I really think, I think CGM is, is sort of, you know, it's adopted, it's there and it has a lot more to go. But I'm really a builder person, so I love the idea of being able to go back into the grass and sort of create adoption for this remote patient monitoring and integrate that into the healthcare system. Because I, like I said, I, I don't see any way that CGM ever is completely reaches its potential without the full adoption of remote patient monitoring.
- [07:37]
A
All right, so when you say remote patient monitoring, I have several different ideas, right, Depending on who you're talking about. Somebody like my son who's lived with type 1 diabetes for 18 years, he is definitely not interested in having somebody, even his mother, remotely monitor him at this point. Right. Whereas perhaps someone who is more newly diagnosed or Even with type 2 or pre diabetes may not really know much about a cgm, a much better candidate for something like that. What do the endocrinologists in the practice do? I mean, do they literally, I guess I'm picturing, and I may be picturing this incorrectly. Do they remote monitor in real time? Are they just reviewing it more often? I'm just trying to get a clear idea of what the terms here mean.
- [08:20]
B
Yeah. And I think it's an important topic to even go through more often when talking about remote patient monitoring because there's not one flavor. Say there's like all things, I think there's, people are, are say they're doing remote patient monitoring and really all they're doing is looking at a dexcom Clarity or a libreview report. And they looked at it and they're thinking that they're doing remote patient monitoring where it's not what I would call remote patient monitoring or where we should be going or what we're doing here at stridemd. So to your answer of who's looking at it and when someone is looking at all of our patients data 24 hours, seven days a week, there's a platform that the data comes into and if there's anybody with outlier readings, they get a 400, you know, and that triggers someone to actually reach out to that patient. If they're using a cellular blood glucometer, it's in real time. If they're using a continuous glucose monitor, there's a bit of a lag. So until we have a, a real time API connection, you know, they'll continue to be a lag. I really would like to be the first RPM company to get a real time connection at this point, anybody with a connection to the CGM companies is monitoring with generally about like a 30 minute to hour lag behind when they get the data. And for us, you know, real time is very important because we've saved a number of lives from intervening in real time of when people are going low or, you know, they're going too high and being able to prevent sort of an emergency. So for an instance, if we get a 40 blood sugar, we would reach out to that person. If they don't respond, then we'll call their emergency contact. Emergency contact doesn't respond, we'll call EMS to do a welfare visit. And we've had patients like one that thinking of where EMS got there and the woman was somewhere sub 30. The hospital had called us and said, you know, I just want to let you know, you likely saved this woman's life. She was unconscious with a, you know, sub 30 blood sugar and she's okay now. But you know, you guys sending EMS to go. So it's, you know, it's great, you know, and that's one of the things that was so rewarding doing cgm. You know, we were able to alert people in these really emergent situations and now we're getting to continue that and, you know, be like a life alert for patients with diabetes.
- [10:40]
A
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Right, the life alert. That commercial with the necklace. I've fallen and I can't get up. And you know, it's, it's not funny, but we laugh because that's how sometimes humor helps you cope. But I'm just trying to picture this. You know, it's not too long ago that we started talking about diabetes camps, monitoring everybody at the same time. You know, there's a new software system where they can see lots and lots of kids all on one screen. You said people are monitored 24 7. I mean, I don't know how proprietary that is, but what does it look like? Is it a bunch of computer screens? It can't be somebody staring at things 24 7. Right. I mean, you have alerts and alarms built in.
- [11:17]
B
Yeah. So you have both. So you have, so there are, there are a bunch of computer screens and, and people are looking, but the data's aggregated together, you know, and they're seeing patient groups by sort of like a risk stratification, who's at most risk and most importantly or who's having an alert now. So those patients that were having some extreme high or low situation that would come to the health Coach's terminal, and they would reach out to them and you have sort of a pyramid of care. You know, where there's, there's health coaches that would be like a medical assistant or nutritionist that had gone through and done an ADA diabetes education type program, or then above that would be some certified diabetes educators. Then from there you have primary care physicians. And then at the top of the. Of the pyramid is endocrinologists. So each level would have certain situations that they may kick that up to the next level to give a little more intensive information education or, you know, adjustments in medication.
- [12:19]
A
Tell me a little bit about telehealth because that became so popular during COVID and looks like it's kind of pulled back a little bit. Not every endocrinologist is doing that anymore.
- [12:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, for us, that is the. What we're doing and what the goal is, is to do that be even better is really connect that vertical integration where we. We now have these endocrinology centers. So a patient could go in and into a brick and mortar office and they leave and someone is monitoring that data. That's going 24 7. And if there's something they need to be discussed, it's, you know, we can triage that. Is it a diabetes educator or does it need a telehealth physician to reach out to them rather than have them go all the way back to the office? So for us, you know, telehealth is growing. You know, I think there's different regulations. You see the number of extensions from the COVID area, policy changes, and I think that's a good thing. You know, there's still some question on phone encounters that that's something that they're looking to see if that would be acceptable long term versus a video encounter next year. But for us, we're really seeing the growth in telehealth and I think, you know, to really be appropriate if we're, if we're all looking to give better care at a lower expenses, it's the only pathway. And it's. It's better for the patients, it's better for the practice. It just makes sense.
- [13:37]
A
Yeah. I mean, you know, you think about how few endocrinologists there are and how often people with diabetes are not seeing an endocrinologist. Is that the. One of the ideas here too, is to try to reach more people?
- [13:48]
B
Exactly. It's, you know, we really need to be able to do a better job in our allocation of care. So right now, one of the major problems I see that we're trying to address is so say each endocrinologist might be seeing a thousand patients with diabetes, but a lot of times they have patients that have seen them for a long time. They're at goal, their time and range is 95%. Their A1C is 6. And there they are. They gotta drive 45 minutes to the endo, wait 30 minutes in a chair, wait 20 minutes for them to come in. And really. And the doctor looks at all the readings and goes, yep, you're good. Let's. Here's. I'm going to refill all your scripts. Meanwhile, there's someone with an A1C at 12 that's at risk for a foot amputation. That's being told you have eight weeks before you can see this endocrinologist. It's not fair, it's not right, doesn't make any sense. And that's something we're really trying to address. So that now if a patient is at goal, hey, we'll have one of our telehealth docs call you, go over your data and then do your refills. You could stay at home, save yourself the drive, and let me open up a space for the endocrinologist to take the people that are at greater need.
- [14:52]
A
So this is terrible, but the first thing I thought when you sent that ambulance to check on that woman, and I'm glad she's okay. Yeah, who pays for that? Right back to our conversation. But first, Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Omnipod. At one of our recent moms night out events, the Omnipod team was on site asking moms about their experience with the OmniPod 5 automated insulin delivery system. It was so much fun and it was great to hear what the moms have to say. Here's what Angela, mom to Dominic, told us.
- [15:27]
C
My son is 10 years old and he uses an Omnipod 5. It's the only pump he has used since he was diagnosed. It's been a life changing piece of equipment for him to have. He's a competitive swimmer. He is able to keep it on in the pool and we don't have to worry about disconnecting. So we absolutely love Omnipod and it has really just made a big difference in his life.
- [15:46]
A
Want to try Omnipod 5 for yourself? Request a free Omnipod 5 starter kit today by visiting omnipod.com diabetesconnections Terms and conditions apply. Eligibility may vary.
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B
Well, it depends on what's the person's situation, you know, I mean, oh, that's True. You know, things like hospital, ambulance care, all of that stuff. And generally a welfare check is something that would be like a city service as well.
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A
Yeah. So when they sign up with you, they're basically checking a box saying, if you can't reach me, if you can't reach what's happening.
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B
Yeah. And I think it's an interesting thing because, you know, and it's. I think one of the things we really work to get good at here is, is how do we now differentiate the levels of intervention based on personal choice? Because imagine we're doing tens of thousands of patients right now. It's very difficult to differentiate your protocols, every single individual patient. And that's what we've been working on now, because we may have someone who stops the service because we reached out too much and another person thinks we reached out too little. It's kind of the. Interesting to me, it's like when I worked in pharmaceuticals, things were easy. You know, you'd talk to the doctor. When it made sense to the doctor, he would prescribe it to patients once. Now, working with Dexcom, and we had direct patient contact. You start realizing how difficult it is when you are the point of contact with the normal population. There is a lot of variants. A lot of people have just had a bad day. You know, there's things that are out of your control. So now how do you become adaptive to try to make as many people happy with the service as possible?
- [17:25]
A
I am so glad to hear you say that, because I've been thinking that over here as well. You know, you think about how differently every individual, especially with type 1 diabetes, is going to manage their condition and the expectations that they have. Right. Where some people listening are thinking, this is the greatest thing ever. I want someone to touch base with me all the time. And others I'm sure, are like, please leave me the hell alone. I am fine. How are you doing that? I mean, is it just research, trial and error, lots of talking to patients?
- [17:55]
B
All of the above. Yeah. So it's. I mean, you learn by doing. Really. It's more on the back end now that, you know, a lot of it is adjusting these care plans to sort of, you know, a mantra we've been using for a year now, you know, is monitor, don't bother. You know, so try to monitor the patient and really only intercede when there's true risk. And then otherwise, we're offering our services. Hey, notice you've been having a lot of high blood sugars. If you'd like to talk to one of our CDEs, I'd love to help you make an appointment, you throw it out on the table and if they take it, great. But otherwise, I think for some point of time we were really trying to ram our health down everyone's throats. And that's really, it's not uncommon in healthcare. You know, everybody wants to, you want it so bad to help people that you're kind of going too much. So I think, you know, we've gotten a lot more of like offering the services or offering our insights, you know, in some areas that are non negotiable. Like they were with a Dexcom, you know, for a long time, they, they had and still do a low blood sugar alert at 55. And you would always get folks that would say, man, I'm 30 and I feel fine. And you have to tell them, well, that's. You're near death. You feel fine because your body's adapted to a bad thing. The same way as an alcoholic feels fine if they're, you know, drank a bottle of vodka. Your body's adapted. It's not safe for you to be at 30. So we're not comfortable knowing that you're that, you know, low and we're not, we didn't at least let you know, you know, it's same thing on our end. Like, we're not comfortable if you're 30. At no point am I not going to at least call and try to make an intervene because I'd rather you cancel the service and know that I saved someone's life than someone was happy that, you know, and, and we didn't call them, but then they died. And it's, you know, it was a big campaign in diabetes for a while, talking about the risk of death from hypoglycemia. And I think people have gotten away from that a bit. And it almost thinks, I think it was the ADA or JDRF that put out a large campaign on it. And people are walking away from how severe and dangerous it is. No one should die from a hypoglycemic event. It is one of the things that like, truly bothers me. Like it should never happen. We have, with all the technology and all the things we have to do, it's just something that shouldn't happen.
- [20:10]
A
Yeah.
- [20:11]
B
Is the moral of it, if it, if it was five people, if it was two people, it should be zero.
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A
Yeah. You recently spoke at Diabetes Mind Innovation Days, one of my favorite conferences. I just couldn't make it out to the west Coast. You were on a panel all about this issue. Any insights from that? I'm curious that such a tech centric group, you know, they are so on the, on the cutting edge of everything. That's the latest and greatest. How was that?
- [20:36]
B
Yeah, I thought it was great. I think they do. You know, if you're into diabetes technology, you should go to the Diabetes mind event because it's, it's, you know, so often diabetes tech is intermingled into ces like a technology conference or, you know, you see some at ada. But it's not all about the technology. You know, you know, endo society, I think had less, you know, we're here. It was a great meeting. The way they sort of inter. Placed a lot of people from industry and patients and caregivers. I think the, the mix of people, really the conversation topics were very appropriate for anyone that's super passionate about diabetes technology.
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A
I'm curious, the panel that you were on, did you. Yeah, you five people talking about remote monitoring and things like that, Any, any takeaways, anything that you found interesting?
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B
Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot of work to be done. I think that there's a lot of interest. I think the, the number of questions and the, and the passion in people, in people's voices was very motivating for me and, and that they were very interested in the panel. I think there's a lot of, you know, there's several companies that were working on like a, a technical solution for remote patient monitoring and how to do that. I think, you know, it's super interesting being deep in this one topic. I think that everybody outside of it, unless you're already doing this at scale, doesn't even realize all the challenges you have to get to scale so that, you know, I've gone to even other remote patient monitoring conferences and there's people, and they're doing a few hundred people, they're doing maybe a thousand patients. And a lot of people are looking at remote patient monitoring and thinking that the data visualization piece of the digital software is the all inclusive. If you have that, you're doing remote patient monitoring. And that'd be like saying if you only had a pinky, you have the hand. You know, like it's really just one small component to a very expensive and heavy tech stack to really do this appropriately at scale.
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A
What do you think you're. I mean, two different questions here. So when you're talking about doing this at scale, right. Do you think that eventually everybody uses a CGM will be a candidate for a service like this? Are they already.
- [22:50]
B
Yeah, they really already are. But I think the, the service has to catch up with the differentiation of populations. So I think you, you were starting to touch on it a little bit before when you talked about it. I think it was your son. Is that right?
- [23:04]
A
Yes.
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B
Who has type one. It's, you know, we, we have a really strong organic demand to create A pediatric type 1 remote patient monitoring program doesn't exist right now. You know, I've talked to folks at jdrf, a number of different endocrine centers and they're like, take my money, make this happen tomorrow. People need help and we're tired, we're overburdened, we can't do. We need someone else that can help. But that program looks very different than the program. RPM is really where CGM was initially grew in that type 1 pediatric space first because of JDRF's efforts getting coverage. And there was a, there was a large trial that was done and where remote patient monitoring was really born. Most of the population is in your seniors right now, so it's 65 and over. I think that will migrate down as we become more adaptive. But the program for a 75 year old is very different than it looks like for a 17 year old. And, you know, that's why I've reached out to some I know that started this college diabetes network as well to try to get some insights. I think in short term you probably have three different programs. You know, one's a pediatric 18 and under, one is 18 to 25 or 24. And then you have sort of an adult monitoring program. I think each of those come with different dynamics and needs. Right now we really have one for seniors. You know, I think it's fine for all adults, but you know, it's, it's very much established there. So, you know, that's going to be necessary. But anybody that's on a CGM really should be on a remote patient monitoring program, as long as it's appropriately backed with staff and that, that they can help make a difference.
- [24:49]
A
Talk to me about cost. What does this cost? Is there insurance coverage?
- [24:53]
B
Exactly. So that's the interesting part. There is insurance coverage. It's pretty ubiquitous. I think we've overcome that problem faster than CGM did because the government looks at, even when you look at the government panels, then they talk about this, they understand the problem. The health care system is overburdened. How do we do this? This is one way, if you do, you know, you're monitoring and doing proactive interventions that reduces hospitalizations and Overall cost of care. You know, if you took rough reimbursement RPM in general, think of it like, you know, maybe if you're doing all the things you're supposed to, you might get about $100 a patient per month. Know that'd be the cost to the system. There's other codes called ccm. There's pcm, there's chronic care management, principal care management. Those may end at another $80 or so. So you're anywhere in that a hundred to two hundred dollars. So it's not a lot of money. It's actually really interesting to me how much a patient gets for such a low amount of money relative to the system.
- [25:53]
A
Right. And I may have misunderstood, but you're talking about what you're reimbursed. What is the patient paying?
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B
Yeah, most patients are paying nothing to, you know, their normal $20 copay or so. You know, the costs are to the patient if they. If they're insured, is relatively nothing.
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A
Is that dependent too on Medicare? I mean, you're talking about an older.
- [26:13]
B
Yeah, depending on, you know, Medicare. But it's also most of your commercial payers, you still have that. That issue that you had with CGM early on where there's some plans like Florida Blue Cross, Blue Shield doesn't pay for remote patient monitoring. I think it's only a short amount of time before they do. And when it's Aetna, Cigna, you know, United, all cover, you know, it's moving very quickly. That coverage is sitting there almost underutilized, you know, and a lot of times they, you know, even government officials. I've seen of someone from CMS that's saying, you know, I'm really surprised. I thought these codes would be utilized even more than they are. I think they're, you know, they're looking to make sure. Sure there's good oversight of the codes, that everything's appropriate. But, you know, like, we talk about that pediatric population, which is something that's like, you know, it's something that is really important me to make happen at some point. It doesn't exist now, but I feel like it's crazy that it's not there to help those parents because it's. And the children. But it's. It's a really stressful time, and it's something that we can do a good job helping them with because as much as everyone thinks of diabetes management, as, you know, the clinical piece, what we find is a lot of what we're doing is even just helping patients coordinate. Oh, they got the Dexcom prescription. Well. Oh, they say I need a prior authorization. I'm not picking that up. Oh, let me call your doctor and get that. Let me call the pharmacy. Let me call ADS or US Med or Edge park and help. Oh, you need a cert. Your certificate of medical necessity is missing a date at the bottom. You know, there's a hundred little traps that's keeping people from getting their diabetes supplies, and there's a lot of savvy folks that say, well, that's no big deal. But, you know, there's a lot of people that are just overwhelmed with life and dealing with the diabetes that they would just give up.
- [28:02]
A
Yeah.
- [28:03]
B
And they just don't go get the medication. They don't get it. And that's what a lot of our health coaches are working on throughout the day, outside of just, hey, you need an insulin adjustment or something of that nature.
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A
All right, before I let you go, I'm curious, too. You know, when you're thinking about expanding into pediatrics or other companies doing this, you know, as you said, there's a big need here, and there's a big void to fill. I think there would be a lot of concern about people who are not employing, as you've already mentioned, diabetes care and education specialists who are not employing, endocrinologists who are not really quality, who are just saying, we're remote monitoring you now send us your Dexcom follow code, and we'll have the intern watch it for, you know, overnight. What are some things that patients and patient families should ask about when they're looking for qualified remote monitoring? Because this is so new, it makes me nervous.
- [28:53]
B
Yeah. You know, I think everybody is doing it with their best intentions. You know, that said, I think the overnight watch is important to me. If I think there's a lot of programs, I thought everybody was doing it. As I work with more clinical sites, and these are major names that I've talked to that are doing these programs, and they have no one looking at the data continuously. They have someone that will look through the data once every so many days. And, you know, I talk to one institution, really big name, you know, and they have, you know, like, one person that rotates through 600 patients every so many days, and they look at it, and I think, do I think that's better than not having it 100%? Do. I think it's the best possible way? I don't. So if I'm a patient, I'm looking. Do you have anybody that's watching this data 24 7? So that if something happens, maybe it's not in, even in real time, it's a half hour or hour behind. It's still, someone knows it happened at that moment. You know, I think, you know, like you mentioned, it's good if they have the full pyramid of care. Do you have diabetes? Educators on staff, do you have health coaches? Do you have endocrinologist? Do you have primary care? Even if it's one person, you know, is there a person there that if need be, they can move this topic up to that has domain experience of that situation?
- [30:14]
A
So before I let you go, Scott, I know you work with endocrinology offices. I know you're, you're really scaling this up. Are there any studies or are you participating in any that are showing the difference that you're making here? I mean, your practice or remote monitoring in general?
- [30:28]
B
Yeah, so that's another. All of the above. I think, you know, we're fortunate that there's, you know, some clinical trials that have been done to show in general all of the benefits of remote patient monitoring. We've done our own in house, where we saw a 30% reduction in time spent in hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, increasing time spent at goal. We are in the process with several of the universities on a really interesting discharge study now where patients, you know, one arm of the patients that went in for either diabetic ketoacidosis or hypoglycemia, one arm would be released with a CGM prescription and the other arm would get a CGM prescription and the remote patient monitoring, and let's see, how, what's the readmission rate and then what percentage of each group even got their CGM up and running and was using it. So I'm really interested in seeing that. Which it takes. You know, the not fun part of our world is that stuff takes, you know, I was like, so how can we, what do you guys think? You know, we'd be done in three months and then six months and, and they're like, no, we, we're not even getting through the irb, you know, approval for, you know, six months and then we'll go live. And I'm going, oh, my God. You know, two years later we. So it's. That is to do it. Yeah, part of it. But it's, it's, it's really exciting to be a part of sort of paving the way on that.
- [31:48]
A
That's great. Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining me. Keep us posted before you have the end of that. Study or after?
- [31:54]
B
Yeah, no, we'll give you, you know, the different outcomes as soon as we get them. Love it.
- [31:58]
A
Thanks for joining me today.
- [31:59]
B
All right, thank you.
- [32:05]
A
More information about everything we talked about, go to diabetes-connections.com and in the show notes for this episode, you will find out more about StrideMD. I'll have more links. I will also have links to the promo codes that I talked about for the world's worst diabetes mom books and for Mom's Night out this fall. I am very excited about Mother's Day because I am going to be playing golf with my husband and with Benny. Benny's taking up a little bit of golf this year, so we're heading out just to play nine holes and go out to dinner, which will be a lot of fun. All right, thank you to my editor, John Buchenis from Audio Editing Solutions. Thank you for listening. I'm Stacey Sims. I'll see you back here soon. Until then, be kind to yourself. Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacy Sims Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged.