For Your Practice

During a recent phone follow-up call to one of my patients, a co-worker and I avoided a "Diabetes Disaster." My patient told me that she had received her mail-order refill for "ASPART," but the bottle didn't look the same....

I am a primary care provider in a small private office. A long-term patient of mine, 32 years of age, was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. His insurance is now one I do not participate in. Until his recent diagnosis, he visited annually and paid out of pocket. He wanted to stay with me for his care....

Pharmacist-led medication therapy management (MTM) has been shown to improve medication adherence. 

Female, type 1 diabetes for 42 years, 58 years of age, lives with husband and dog. The patient has hypoglycemic unawareness. We regularly readjust her treatment plan and have recommended CGM for this patient on numerous occasions. Still, she refuses, stating her dog wakes her up if and when she has hypoglycemia. She called to let us know her dog passed away....

Diabetes mellitus continues to grow as a global healthcare problem and is associated with significant microvascular and macrovascular complications. 

What if improving diabetes care was as easy as changing the way we interact with patients? 

A 29-year-old woman with insulin-dependent diabetes noted a painful erosion at the site of the tattoo which she had gotten 7 days before. A culture isolated staphylococcus aureus confirming the clinical impression of staph. This diagnosis was not entirely unexpected, since patients with diabetes mellitus are predisposed to staphylococcal infection.

By Sheri Colberg, PhD
This time of year, all of the fitness clubs and gyms run specials to bring in new members, and they know—and even count on the fact that—most of those people will no longer be regularly attending classes or doing workouts by the time spring hits. How do you help your patients avoid joining those exercise dropouts? Here are some tips from our diabetes exercise expert that you can download in PDF format to hand out to your patients.

by Guest Writer Richard Purcell
More than 100 million U.S. adults are now living with diabetes or prediabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1 This epidemic requires new healthcare models to deliver optimal, patient-focused, guideline-directed care to improve outcomes and reduce costs. The establishment of a new multispecialty Managed Services Organization (MSO) in Arizona spotlights the numerous benefits, to patients and providers alike, of providing end-to-end healthcare services and disease management solutions for complex diabetes.

I am a retail pharmacist working in a busy chain pharmacy.  A patient came in and requested a temporary supply of his Crestor 40 mg tablets because he had run out of tablets before he was eligible for a refill through insurance.  I checked his profile and noticed that it had been 1 1/2 months since his last 90 day refill so I asked why he had run out.  He said that his doctor had told him to double up and take 80 mg daily.  This didn't sound correct, but it was after office hours and the patient was adamant that these were his doctor's instructions and that he would have to stop his medication if I didn't dispense to him.