Veterans receiving active care management with home device show three-month A1C decrease
TUESDAY, March 30 (HealthDay News) -- Among individuals with type 2 diabetes and inadequate glycemic control, management with a home telemonitoring program leads to larger reductions in A1C compared to a monthly care coordination phone call, though both improve glycemic control, according to research published in the March issue of Diabetes Care.
Roslyn A. Stone, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues analyzed data from 150 veterans who had type 2 diabetes and an A1C at enrollment of at least 7.5 percent. All had taken oral hypoglycemic agents and/or insulin for at least a year. Participants were randomly assigned to a monthly phone call for care coordination with a diabetes nurse educator (CC), or active care management with a home telemonitoring device (ACM+HT).
The researchers found that the ACM+HT group had larger decreases in A1C compared to the monthly CC group (1.7 versus 0.7 percent at three months; 1.7 versus 0.8 percent at six months). Most of the improvement occurred by three months.
"The relative contributions of the automated messaging and monitoring capacity provided by the home telemonitoring device, the nearly four-fold greater nurse-to-participant telephone contact time, and the greater intensification of insulin therapy in the ACM+HT versus CC group to the A1C outcomes cannot be determined from our study design," the authors note.
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