Video

Anne Peters, MD, on Medical Devices for Managing Type 2 Diabetes

07/01/2021

In this video, Anne Peters, MD, discusses the present and future of medical devices used to treat patients with type 2 diabetes. She also spoke about this topic at our Practical Updates in Primary Care 2021 virtual series. 

Additional Resources:

Practical Updates in Primary Care newsroom.

For more information about PUPC 2021 Virtual Series and to register for upcoming sessions, visit https://practicalupdates.consultant360.com/.

Anne Peters, MD, is a professor of clinical medicine at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr Anne Peters: Hi, I'm Dr. Anne Peters, a diabetologist from the University of Southern California. First, I want to thank you for joining my session. I'm going to be talking about the present and future use of medical devices, and I think that we have to understand this in context.

First of all, one of the things we've learned is that A1C isn't the end‑all and be‑all anymore when we assess people with diabetes.

In fact, when you use medical devices, in particular continuous glucose monitors, we begin to see that there are parameters such as time and range, glycemic variability, and other features that make us understand more what a patient's lived experience with diabetes is and how we can better help them.

I'm a big believer that technology can help us improve the lives of our patients with diabetes, but just prescribing technology alone isn't enough. You have to prescribe technology and use it in the context of education and feedback. We have to give patients what they need to use these tools effectively.

That leads to how do we use these clinically? What's our strategy? The first thing that is really important, and I hate to list this at the top, is reimbursement.

It turns out that there is reimbursement for using these tools. You need to learn the billing codes, which I'll discuss in detail, because that way you get more credit, you get more RVUs, and more money for doing the thing that is best for patients.

Then I talk about how to integrate these into the practice, how to download the devices, how to use these tools along with your patients to empower your patients and help your patients.

Hopefully, I can end with you all having a better clinical sense of how to incorporate medical devices into your practice. Thank you very much for listening to my session.