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The Role of Managed Care in Identifying and Counseling Patients With Prediabetes
John A. Johnson, MD, MBA: In the managed care community, what we’ve seen in the United States is a growing incidence and prevalence of obesity and Americans who are overweight. Obesity, being overweight, and inactivity are all risk factors for developing diabetes. So is low social economic status—whether it’s low-income or low-educational background.
So, managed care likes to partner with community entities. For example, at WellCare, we partner with agencies to host health fairs. We do this to screen the general public and enhance awareness of diabetes.
Twenty-nine million Americans have diabetes, 25% of them are unaware that they have diabetes, and 86 million Americans are pre-diabetic. The more of those Americans that we can screen and find the diagnoses, the more we can avoid some of the downstream complications.
The managed care organization partners with providers to ensure that patients receive a BMI (body mass index), and to determine an exercise regimen, and to counsel regarding nutrition to help ensure that they are less likely to develop diabetes by becoming more active and managing their diet.
In managed care, it’s really more of a partnership to prevent the onset of diabetes with earlier screening and earlier intervention. At WellCare, we do that by partnering with agencies that help us.
Government agencies have created an online portal for the public to report potential anticompetitive practices in health care; there are changes coming to the “boxed warning” section for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR T) to highlight T-cell blood cancer risk; questions about the safety of obesity medications during pregnancy have arisen in women on them who previously struggled with fertility issues.
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Navigating Health Literacy, Social Determinants, and Discrimination in National Health Plans
February 13th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the February 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on how health plans can screen for health literacy, social determinants of health, and perceived health care discrimination.
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Drs Raymond Thertulien, Joseph Mikhael on Racial Disparities in Multiple Myeloma Care Access
December 28th 2023In the wake of the 2023 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition, Raymond Thertulien, MD, PhD, of Novant Health, and Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, FRCPC, FACP, chief medical officer of the International Myeloma Foundation, discussed health equity research highlights from the meeting and drivers of racial disparities in multiple myeloma outcomes.
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Pegcetacoplan for PNH More Cost-Effective Than Anti-C5 Monoclonal Antibodies
April 18th 2024A cost-utility analysis conducted from the perspective of the Italian health system found that pegcetacoplan was more effective and less costly than 2 complement 5 (C5) inhibitors for the treatment of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH).
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