Healthcare Reform and Patient-Centered Diabetes Care

Amitabh Chandra, PhD, says health reform affects patient-centered diabetes care through two different interventions. The first is supply-side focused, or changing the way we pay providers. The second is on the demand side, or changing how cost sharing impacts patients. Dr Chandra argues that going forward, providers should combine the 2 approaches in order to reach a more effective care delivery model like that seen in an ACO.

“Ideally, as we go forward with the ACO movement, I could see a future ACO or a future insurer saying ‘I can do both at the same time,’” Dr Chandra said. “You'd need a lot of data to be able to pull it off because you want to be able to measure adverse effects and patient outcomes in real-time. That's always hard to do, but I'm very optimistic.”