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US Senate introduces diabetes care act
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In an effort to aggressively change the current diabetes trend, co-chairs of the Senate Diabetes Caucus, Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced The National Diabetes Clinical Care Commission Act.
The new legislation will create a commission made up of private and public sector members who will evaluate the government’s current approaches to diabetes care, deliver recommendations of improvement, integration and new approaches to handling what many providers have deemed an epidemic.
In a press release issued by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE), the association’s president and Endocrine Today’s Chief Medical Editor, Alan Garber, MD, PhD, called the act a “significant first step in the nation’s battle against diabetes and its consequences.”
“As in other areas, the federal government has multiple efforts focusing on diabetes. Our bill is designed to coordinate and concentrate federal efforts on diabetes into the most effective interventions and methods for data retrieval,” Garber told Endocrine Today.
According to the press release, The National Diabetes Clinical Care Commission will include diabetes experts such as endocrinologists and other health care providers. They will work directly with patients who have been diagnosed with diabetes, patient advocates and representatives from federal agencies heavily involved in diabetes care initiatives.
The Commission is set to evaluate the current improvement plans and identify ineffective policies and suggest new recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and to Congress on ways to improve patient outcomes.
The National Diabetes Clinical Care Commission Act was also introduced by Congressman Pete Olson (R-22-Texas) last September in the US House of Representatives, according to the release.