According to a recent study published online in the journal Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, patients with type 2 diabetes who were treated by an interdisciplinary care team improved their glycemic control, quality of life, and self-care abilities.
“Diabetes is a major public health concern, and many people suffer from several chronic diseases, such as hypertension,” said Joyce Yu-Chia Lee, a clinical professor of health sciences at UCI.
“These patients have unique demands that necessitate a multimodal approach to care that includes drug management and lifestyle changes.” The study included 264 individuals with type 2 diabetes who were taking five or more daily drugs in an open-label, multicenter, randomized control experiment.
Community pharmacists from retail pharmacies were encouraged to examine patients’ prescriptions directly in the clinic setting with the primary care team, which included physicians, nurses, and dieticians, in the collaborative care intervention group.
Members of the cohort were then followed up on by community pharmacists on a regular basis from the convenience of their own pharmacies, with the added benefit of temporal flexibility.
“The findings of our study of the clinical and humanistic outcomes of a community pharmacist-involved collaborative care model in diabetes management show that this model can bridge communication gaps between patients and their primary care team, forming a safety net for people with chronic diseases,” Lee said.
