Diabetes Collaborative
Talking Points for Team / Physician Participation
The Problem
Diabetes is a serious problem, and many obstacles confront physicians in improving
diabetes care:

Diabetes mellitus affects 16 million Americans, including 5.5% (70,000) Maine
residents.

Over 150,000 people die from diabetes and its complications each year, including
over 1300 individuals in Maine.

Most diabetic complications including heart disease, lower extremity amputations
and blindness are preventable.

Despite the existence of national (ADA) guidelines for diabetes care, national and
state studies have shown that rates of adherence to diabetes care recommendations
could be greatly improved: almost 50% of all patients with diabetes do not get a
dilated eye exam or recommended lipid screening annually; and a majority do not
reach recommended targets for HbA1C or LDL control.
A Solution: Participate in the ____________Diabetes Clinical Practice
Collaborative

Groundbreaking program offering opportunity for practices to improve the care you
provide to individuals with diabetes

Is a systematic, coordinated, community-based approach to diabetes care that uses
multiple strategies to obtain results

It focuses on efforts to improve patient education and self-management skills

Improves coordination between community-based diabetes educators and physician
offices

Provides physicians with clinical practice tools and data to improve care.
Collaborative Model:

Based on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's (IHI) proven Break Through
Series model

Opportunity for clinical practice teams to work together to improve diabetes care

Primary care providers and their office teams will receive support from expert faculty
for approximately one year to achieve improvements in diabetes care

While participation in similar national collaboratives can cost up to $15,000, this
opportunity is being offered at ______ to participating physician practices and
hospital-based teams within the ___________.
Benefits of participation

Goal of this Collaborative model is to give a framework for teams to ultimately
become both more efficient AND create better outcomes

Potential for successful teams to eventually be rewarded for improved outcomes
achieved

Teams participating in the Collaborative will be better situated to benefit from
current provider reward initiatives - e.g.
o A PHO's program to reward PCP practices that can demonstrate improved
outcomes
Improving Chronic Illness Care
www.improvingchroniccare.org
revised 05/03 by Connie Sixta




o A Management Coalition's "IPRP" (Informing Patients, Rewarding Providers)
project
Major focus of improvement within the Collaborative is the role of the practice
"team" in improving care. We are really not looking for physicians to be spending
lots of extra time with patients, but instead encouraging a much more teambased effort on the part of the practice, and promoting the development of
systems in the office that improve care and efficiencies.
While physician compensation in some organizations is increasingly affected by
productivity, most organizations also include some compensation
component for quality improvement activities and/or reaching clinical goals
within your compensation package. Involvement in the Collaborative can be one
way of improving performance on those other variables.
Recognizing that attendance at the Learning Sessions involves a significant amount
of time on your part, we have made a commitment to provide Cat I CME credit
for each of these Learning Sessions, at no charge to physicians. For example,
physicians spend approximately 8-12 hrs per Learning Session, therefore,
attendance at 3 Learning Sessions should easily meet a physician's 25 hr Cat I CME
requirement for the year (the 4th and final session will actually be in month 13, or
just over a year from the start).
Also, many Learning Sessions actually start in the late afternoon on Day 1 (i.e. 3 or
4PM). Therefore, this scheduling hopefully will not impact your time out of patient
care as much as a full "half-day" would do.
Commitment

At the same time, we realize that participation in the Collaborative and the real work
related to it requires up-front commitment and time on the part of practice there is, unfortunately, no way around that. Ultimately the Collaborative is
voluntary, and is designed only for practices that really want to participate.

In addition, we realize that no practice will be successful in this effort without
the support of their "senior partners or senior leadership" - i.e. individuals
within your organization who ultimately control and direct resources and can
accommodate and support your participation (or not!). These senior
partners/leaders need to be informed and supportive of your participation in this in
order to secure real support at the highest levels for your participation.

In summary, participation in the Collaborative is undeniably a lot of work, and is a
voluntary effort that really should only be undertaken by practices that
have the desire, the will, and the senior administrative support to do so.
We look forward to working with teams who are willing and able to make the
commitment to participate!
We thank the author of this form, Dr. Lisa Letourneau at MaineHealth, for sharing it with
us.
Improving Chronic Illness Care
www.improvingchroniccare.org
revised 05/03 by Connie Sixta