Clinical Diabetes: A Qualitative Study of Adapting Telehealth Systems for Specialty Diabetes Care Across Four California Medical Centers

Clinical Diabetes: A Qualitative Study of Adapting Telehealth Systems for Specialty Diabetes Care Across Four California Medical Centers

Telehealth continues to play an important role in specialty diabetes care, but there are variations in how this care is delivered. Researchers interviewed clinicians and staff who provide diabetes care through telehealth across four University of California academic medical centers: UC Davis Health, UCSF Health, UCLA Health and UC San Diego Health. More information can be found in the press release. The study suggests several important strategies to improve telehealth operations:

Dedicated staff support is essential to obtain data from patients’ devices (like remote glucose monitors) ahead of telehealth visits. This can improve access to care for individuals with limited digital literacy, save clinician time during visits and prevent unnecessary rescheduling of appointments.
Efficient workflows around scheduling follow-up visits are needed to ensure people don’t experience lapses in care.
Finding the best ways to facilitate team-based diabetes care is key. For a diabetes management telehealth visit, this may include a nurse, dietitian, social worker, pharmacist or educator, in addition to the primary clinician. It is important to create workflows that support this effort.