Health care professionals, patients agree on pathway for improving type 2 diabetes care
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New results have suggested an alignment of the perceived needs and wishes for improved type 2 diabetes care among people with diabetes and health care professionals, although important health care gaps persist.
“Globally, type 2 diabetes care is often fragmented and still organized in a provider-centered way, resulting in suboptimal care for many individuals,” Anthony Russell, MBBS, PhD, FRACP, director of endocrinology at Princess Alexandra Hospital and honorary associate professor at the Centre for Health Services Research at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues wrote. “As health care systems seek to implement digital care innovations, it is timely to reassess stakeholders’ priorities to guide the redesign of diabetes care.”
The researchers aimed to detail the needs and wishes of adults with type 2 diabetes and specialist and primary care teams relating to optimal diabetes care to determine how to more fully support patients with diabetes in a metropolitan health care service in Australia.
Guided by a participatory design approach, which actively involves stakeholders in the design process, the researchers conducted four focus groups and 16 interviews from November 2019 to January 2020. In all, they included 17 adults with type 2 diabetes, seven specialist clinicians from a diabetes outpatient clinic in Brisbane, Australia, and seven primary care professionals from different clinics in Brisbane.
According to study methodology, the researchers assessed data with reflexive thematic analysis, building on the capability, opportunity, motivation and behavior (COM-B) model. This model describes behaviors that result from interactions between knowledge and skills (capability); social and physical environment (opportunity); and emotions and plans (motivation).
Data revealed that adults with diabetes expressed the desire to be equipped, supported and recognized for their efforts in a holistic way, and also to receive personalized care at the right time and improved access to connected services; health care professionals agreed, expressing their own burden resulting from the challenging work.
“Overall, both groups desired holistic, personalized, supportive, proactive and coordinated care pathways,” Silva and colleagues wrote.
They added that this study represents the first step of a participatory design project to explore stakeholders’ needs for optimal type 2 diabetes care, with a separate publication of the next steps, including proposed solutions and redesigned care pathways, forthcoming.
“We conclude that there is an alignment of the perceived needs for improved diabetes care among adults with type 2 diabetes and health care professionals,” the researchers wrote. “Overall, both groups wished for holistic, personalized, supportive, proactive and coordinated care pathways. New care pathways should consider stakeholders’ views to address the gaps between their wishes and the health care currently provided.”
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