Latest Conference Content

One of the featured workshops at the America's Health Insurance Plans Institute 2012 on Wednesday was the Health Reform Advanced Studies Workshop, which was an interactive session that touched on a number of healthcare issues. Here are some of the highlights.

A focus at the America's Health Insurance Plans Institute 2012 is health insurance exchanges (HIX). With 30 million newly insured lives entering HIX in 2014, insurers face considerable risk. To assist insurers with managing this risk, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have developed 3 methods-reinsurance, risk adjustment, and risk corridors.

Sarah Thomas, Vice President, Public Policy and Communications, NCQA, states that there are 3 significant pieces of quality improvement strategies for health insurance exchanges.

In this video, Margaret Powers, PhD, talks about obesity's impact on the management of chronic illnesses. Dr. Powers also talks about the benefits of obese patients losing 5% to 7% of body weight and working out 150 minutes a week to lower their risk of developing diabetes and other chronic conditions.

Some studies have found that individuals with diabetes have a heightened risk of morbidity and premature death associated with macrovascular complications among smokers. In this study, researchers tested an educational, interventional program led by non-doctor health professionals in order to assist adult male diabetes patients to quit smoking.

In this video, Felicia Hill-Briggs, PhD, speaks about the importance of patient-reported outcomes in improving the effectiveness of specific interventions and treatments. Hill-Briggs also talks about the role of comparative effectiveness in patient-reported outcomes.

Chandra Osborn, PhD, MPH, addresses the technologies available that impact behavioral outcomes in diabetes, such as mobile devices, PDAs, and the Internet. These technologies can be leveraged to improve self-management behaviors and outcomes in diabetes.

The following are highlights of late-breaking abstracts that were on display at the ADA's 72nd Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia, PA. The abstracts were submitted after April 2012.

Diabetes is a condition that has many variables. Researchers are finding more and more about how genetics and patient behavior play a role; however, it turns out that socioeconomic status, education, and ethnic background all play a role as well.

Simon Heller, MB, DM, discusses the various ways hypoglycemia can affect the cardiovascular system. Examples of these consequences are thrombosis, heart disease, and myocardial infarction.

Monday morning at the ADA's 72nd Scientific Sessions featured the National Scientific & Health Care Achievement Awards Presentation and Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award Lecture. This year's recipient of the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award was David Altshuler, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, for his work on genetic-based research regarding the inherited basis of type 2 diabetes, cholesterol levels, myocardial infarction, and a number of other conditions.

Roman Hovorka, PhD, talks about the prohibitive costs in continuous glucose monitoring. He states that if these costs can be reduced there will be wider acceptance and therefore a benefit to diabetes care.

View some of the photos from the American Diabetes Association's 72nd Scientific Sessions.

Dr. Margaret Powers says that currently genetic testing does not motivate behavior change and weight loss in diabetes care. Patients who did not receive the test did just as well with behavior changes as patients who knew they were high risk through genetic testing.

Medication adherence is a complex topic that involves many barriers and obstacles; however, as Elizabeth A. Walker, PhD, RN, CDE, Director of the Prevention and Control Core, Einstein Diabetes Research and Training Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, told her audience at this year's ADA 72nd Scientific Sessions, we must do something.

Thomas Hoerger, PhD, talks about minimizing costs while achieving better diabetes care.

To further develop an already existing Nurse Clinic model at Kaiser Permanente Riverside, researchers in this study developed an internal specialized diabetes training program using the American Association of Diabetes Educators and American Diabetes Association guidelines to improve effectiveness.

As a new era of personalized medicine continues to provide clues between genetic makeups and predispositions to certain disease states, researchers and providers are able to come up with more targeted therapies for patient populations.

Felicia Hill-Briggs, PhD, states that adherence and quality of life outcomes are equally important as comparative effectiveness research in clinical trials.

Medication adherence represents a major barrier to optimal therapeutic outcomes for a number of chronic conditions, and diabetes is no different. Often times, diabetes patients with poor glycemic control and multiple comorbidities have complex medication regimens, which often times complicate and exacerbate this problem.

In this video, Robert Gabbay, MD, PhD, talks about the overall cost implications to diabetes management through behavioral change.

To date, there has been no real-world comparative data published on the initiation of injectable therapy with insulin glargine disposable pen (GLA-P) of glucagons-like peptide-1 agonist liraglutide (LIRA) among type 2 diabetes patients. On day 1 of the American Diabetes Association's 72nd Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia, PA, an abstract was released by Levin et al which provided data from this exact comparative analysis.

Diabetes is a chronic condition that has been shown to be directly related to obesity and heart-related conditions. The strain that diabetes costs put on the healthcare system are well documented. At this year's 72nd Scientific Sessions, the American Diabetes Association featured several studies that aim to help rein in diabetes costs. Here are two studies that were highlighted.

Andrew J. M. Boulton, MD, describes the impact of non-invasive glucose monitoring devices on adherence and hospital admission rates.

The 72nd Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) will take place from June 8-12 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA.

In this video, Beckie Fenrick, PharmD, MDA, Senior Director, Medical Operations, Care Models and Affordability Solutions, Florida Blue, speaks about oncoloytic therapies. In particular, Fenrick talks about new strategies for managing oncolytic therapies without sacrificing outcomes.

In this video, Debbie Stern, RPh, Vice President, Rxperts Inc, speaks about the trends in specialty pharmacy management and what lies on the horizon.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the increase in the shortage of critical drugs could potentially become a major public health emergency.