Letter From The Editor

I was working in the pharmacy and my technician attempted to process a prescription for a 71 y/o patient for glyburide 5 mg. The claim kept rejecting as "drug not covered, prior authorization requested." This made no sense to her or the intern as it is a cheap generic medication. …

Today I was working with two patients to convert them from sliding scale and mixed insulin to basal/bolus dosing. As I was going over the reasons for making the change and the responsibilities they would have, we got stuck at glucose monitoring. I finally got their attention when I told …

When we see older men with diabetes in the office we often see the change in muscle mass and our first thought is to check testosterone levels. For many of these seniors the levels are acceptable and we just attribute the decline to their advancing age. But now a new …

According to researchers from the CDC in Atlanta, medical spending attributable to diabetes per person doubled between 1987 and 2011. "The economic burden of the disease on patients and our health care system has increased substantially," Xiaohui Zhuo, PhD, of the agency’s Division of Diabetes Translation, National Center for Chronic …

There are finally some guidelines coming from the Endocrine Society on treating obesity. This is significant because the guidelines signify the recognition of obesity as a disease to treat and not a problem that causes other diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. I believe that these new guidelines were …

Sometimes thinking out of the box really is necessary to find ways to help our patients. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow won a Nobel Prize for developing the radioimmunoassay technique that revolutionized drug molecule discovery. Her interest in unique compounds led her to order some gila monster saliva, and a few years …

This was a particularly aggravating week for both my patients and insurance companies. The new year has brought copays and deductibles to many of my Part D patients. Most of them had no idea that they now had a $200 deductible and swore that their plan did not tell them …

I was at a recent CE program about healthcare costs and when it came to diabetes the speaker stated that it cost U.S. employers over 100 billion dollars a year and at least 20% of that amount was spent on non-medical costs with a lot going to lost productivity. We …

This past week I have been at CES in Las Vegas. During the four days I was there, I spent three of them in the fitness, digital health, and wellness areas. There were over 350 exhibitors with products that they promise will revolutionize health and fitness. This is a far …

There is one conflict that consistently recurs in healthcare. This conflict is between the use of newer, more expensive medications and older cheaper ones. As we have added new classes of drugs in recent years, this conflict is showing up often in diabetes treatment . The newest drugs are very expensive …