As the Medical Director of the Kansas Business Group on Health I’m sometimes asked to weigh in on topics that might affect employers or employees. This is a reprint of a blog post from KBGH:
The burden of diabetes
34.2 million Americans—a little over one in ten—have diabetes mellitus, a group of disorders of glucose metabolism that causes a buildup of sugar in the blood. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, kidney dialysis, and non-traumatic foot amputation in the United States. The damage of diabetes isn’t limited to its physical or psychological burden. People with diabetes spend about 2.3 times as much on medical care than people without diabetes: $16,750 in medical expenditures per year, compared with $7,151 for non-diabetic persons.
Empowerment through education
In spite of the incredible disease burden and cost of diabetes, less than seven percent of people diagnosed with diabetes receive Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES, or “diabetes education”) within a year of their diagnosis. This is a problem. Diabetes education is one of the most powerful interventions we have for keeping people with diabetes alive. One meta-analysis (a study that combines the data of several separate trials into one dataset) found that attending diabetes education reduced the hemoglobin A1c level, the measure of one’s average blood sugar over a three-month time period, by almost 0.6%, roughly equivalent to taking another daily diabetes medication. Another meta-analysis found that attending diabetes education cut the risk of death by 26%. If true, this is as powerful an effect on death as blood pressure control or treatment of cholesterol.
So the Kansas Business Group on Health is working with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to increase awareness of and referral into diabetes education programs. You’re probably covering diabetes education services for your employees already, whether you intend to or not. The Diabetes Coverage Act states:
“Any individual or group health insurance policy, medical service plan, contract, hospital service corporation contract, hospital and medical service corporation contract, fraternal benefit society or health maintenance organization which provides coverage for accident and health services and which is delivered, issued for delivery, amended or renewed on or after January 1, 1999, also, shall provide coverage for equipment, and supplies, limited to hypodermic needles and supplies used exclusively with diabetes management and outpatient self-management training and education, including medical nutrition therapy, for the treatment of insulin dependent diabetes, insulin-using diabetes, gestational diabetes and noninsulin-using diabetes if prescribed by a health care professional legally authorized to prescribe such services and supplies under the law.”
The benefit is still subject to the usual deductible and co-insurance, and medical necessity requirements.
And we believe employers should be working to get their diabetic employees to attend diabetes education classes. It may prolong the lives of workers, and it may save you, the employer, money (paywall). If you are interested in starting a program through your workplace to get more of your diabetic employees into diabetes education programs, please let us help!
If you’re not ready to go there yet, but you’re interested in finding a diabetes education program in your area, visit here.