Utilization of Telephone Outreach and Telemedicine to Improve Diabetic Outcomes

Author

Nicolas YemmFollow

Date of Award

Fall 10-28-2021

Document Type

DNP Project

Project Team Faculty Member

April Schmidt

Project Team Faculty Member

Wendy Hochreiter

Keywords

Diabetes, Telephone outreach, telemedicine, social determinants of health

Abstract

Diabetic adherence is paramount to achieving adequate glycemic control. Telephone outreach and utilization of telemedicine can improve diabetic adherence through closer monitoring and removing barriers to access for care. The goal of the project was to improve the dashboard HbA1c quality metric within the IM office. The office dashboard HbA1c metric initially was in the “red threshold”, which means <70% of patients aged 18-75 years old with diabetes had a HbA1c <8%. This project involved performing telephone outreach to contact diabetic patients who were due for office follow-up to offer telemedicine as a convenient option for patient evaluation. In addition, the secondary goals of the project included identifying social determinants presenting barriers to diabetic care plan adherence. The results indicated telephone outreach and telemedicine use may help achieve better glycemic control in diabetic patients. This project demonstrated improvement in HbA1c dashboard metrics to the “yellow threshold”, indicating 71% of patients (18-75 years old) in the office with diabetes had a HbA1c <8%. Several limitations were identified, including a short implementation window (6 weeks), lack of ability to assess whether providers were instituting project recommendations, staff engagement, and internet bandwidth/technology literacy issues when using telemedicine. From a long-term implementation perspective, the project showed telephone outreach and telemedicine are useful tools that can positively impact poorly controlled diabetic patients to improve glycemic control. However, the limitations of the project will likely need to be addressed to achieve long-term implementation of the project methods.

Recommended Citation

Yemm, Nicolas, "Utilization of Telephone Outreach and Telemedicine to Improve Diabetic Outcomes" (2021). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 175.
https://spark.siue.edu/dnpprojects/175

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