New education materials, data used to enhance diabetes care and education during COVID-19
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BALTIMORE — Novel education tools and using data to pinpoint people with diabetes with educational needs allowed a health system to cope with a lack of diabetes care and education specialists during COVID-19, according to a presenter.
“Methodist Health System utilizes a multidisciplinary team, the Methodist Health System Diabetes Council, to evaluate opportunities for re-education and design changes that will decrease readmission rates; mine data to improve patient outcomes for glycemic occurrences that may be considered severe harm by CMS electronic clinical quality measures; and adhere to the four care commitments: to take care of our patients, each other, ourselves and Methodist Health System,” Charla Amos, MSN, RN, CDCES, inpatient diabetes educator at Methodist Charlton Medical Center in Dallas, told Healio.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Methodist Health System had to adopt new education methods when three diabetes care and education specialists were absent from their campuses for 1 to 3 months due to illness. During this time, the Methodist Health System Diabetes Council was launched to create a supportive forum for diabetes care and education specialists. The council also included nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, informatics specialists, hospitalists, primary care physicians and social workers. The group began meeting weekly on Zoom in September 2021 with the goal of building a new infrastructure to support providers during the pandemic.
“The leadership saw the impact of not having a diabetes educator available and saw an opportunity that the Methodist Health System could benefit from — a diabetes education tool that could help our bedside nurses and, in the future, the diabetes educators themselves,” Amos said.
At the Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists Annual Conference, Amos and colleagues discussed several different steps the council took to streamline care in their health system. One of the biggest changes was the creation of a patient education book entitled Living and Thriving with Diabetes. The book was sent for publishing in May 2022 and is intended to provide staffers with an easy-to-read resource for when a diabetes care and education specialist is unavailable.
The council also built the Methodist Health System Diabetes Readmission Rate Reporting Tool. The tool allowed providers to see if a patient was readmitted with a diabetes diagnosis and if they had received diabetes education or not. Another new tool, the Glycemic Occurrences Dashboard, allowed diabetes care and education specialists to identify trends more easily within the patient population, look for opportunities to improve on glycemic management and provide data on staff education.
The council also collaborated with EPIC builders to follow CMS guidelines for data collection. This collaborative effort allowed the health system to create CMS-compliant reports on severe hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia cases.
Amos said the weekly Zoom meetings were helpful to staff members in a variety of ways.
“We shared patient experiences, which proved valuable to all,” Amos said. “Newer team members provided us with learning skills to manage electronic media and data interpretation. Senior team members demonstrated knowledge on diabetes education and experiences.
“We shared information, tools, affordability resources, food bank lists and educational opportunities for patients and our staff,” Amos added. “We have worked to provide educational presentations for both patients and staff. For staff, we provided learning opportunities via Zoom or via our system-wide educational platform, Methodist University, which is available on our intranet for all campuses.”
Moving forward, Amos said the staff will continue to evaluate diabetes readmission rate report data, look for revision opportunities in the health system’s order set utilizing American Diabetes Association Standard of Care criteria and plan continuous education for members of the diabetes council.
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Amos C, et al. P114. Presented at: ADCES22; Aug. 12-15, 2022; Baltimore.
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