Today's diabetes care providers face unprecedented challenges. DiaTrends
® offers unprecedented opportunities to meet those challenges as we seek to provide and demonstrate the best possible outcomes for our patients with diabetes.
12 Reasons Diabetes Care Providers Need DiaTrends
DiaTrends can help you:
Physicians know that our health care system is undergoing dramatic changes; in which the focus is shifting from cost control to quality improvement.
DiaTrends is an interactive information system specifically designed to enhance the quality of the diabetes management you provide to your patients and to document your outcomes so that you can prove the quality of your care. DiaTrends helps bridge the gap between diabetes guidelines and the labor-intensive process of providing targeted diabetes care.
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Quality diabetes management is inherently a complex, labor-intensive and time-consuming endeavor.
DiaTrends helps you use your valuable time to stay focused on the key processes of diabetes care. It serves as an organizational tool to help you adhere to published guidelines. It’s simple, quick and intuitive to use. The brief data entry time per patient encounter is more than made up for by the improved productivity and effectiveness that it brings to each visit. Chronological prompts facilitate rapid development of an agenda for each encounter. DiaTrends will help you develop systematic approaches to improving the efficiency and quality of your diabetes care. It’s not just software – it’s a whole new approach to diabetes management.
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Numerous studies have shown that physician adherence to published diabetes care guidelines is often far from optimal.
DiaTrends is a quality-enhancement tool based on the principle that "what gets measured gets done." It helps you keep the processes of care up-to-date. And once you begin real-time reviews of your aggregate data for key indicators, you will discover an added incentive to optimize each patient encounter, namely the opportunity to incrementally improve your overall performance indicators. You will see trends toward improvement, if for no other reason than it feels good to have good numbers! You will have the opportunity to set goals for yourself (or your diabetes care team) and to readily track your progress toward meeting those goals. Context-sensitive links to
full-text current published guidelines (American Diabetes Association; and American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists) are provided.
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Despite compelling evidence (DCCT and UKPDS) proving that intensive glycemic control decreases chronic complications, the average hemoglobin A1c of patients with diabetes is disturbingly high (reportedly about 9.0%; with only
about 12% meeting the ADA goal of <7.0%). This clearly leads to preventable complications and costs. We can and must find innovative ways to do better.
DiaTrends can quickly become the cornerstone of a targeted, evidence-based approach to improved metabolic control. Hemoglobin A1c trend analysis (by individual patient and populations) is a powerful incentive to aggressive management. This leads to a clear potential to improve long-term outcomes.
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There is a need to harness the power of technology to improve diabetes management, in a user-friendly way that fits the workflow of the diabetes care team.
DiaTrends is not intended to serve as a stand-alone medical record. Rather it’s an interactive tool that complements your
existing medical records while enhancing your productivity and the quality of your diabetes care. This strategy provides several advantages. You have the option of using DiaTrends incrementally, gradually phasing in entry of various data elements. So you can think big, but start small. You will maintain the flexibility of continuing to use your medical records (paper or electronic) in your preferred format. However, DiaTrends can print a summary report that could serve as an adjunct to a paper medical record if you so desire.
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We have the potential to improve quality of life and outcomes for people with diabetes. But we need to be able to prove the value of what we do.
DiaTrends was conceived and developed by practicing clinical endocrinologists.
Robust reporting capabilities are included. "Key indicators" of adherence to guidelines in your patient population are built in. In addition, over 175 pre-configured reports are available. By simply selecting parameters and filters from this user-friendly and intuitive report generator, you can readily – with a few mouse clicks – obtain answers to nearly any quality of care issue. For example, you might ask, "What percent of my active patients with type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease have an LDL under 100,
and who are the exceptions?" This is the type of information that we must have in order to be able to maximize our effectiveness and demonstrate the value we can provide to our patients with diabetes. Information is power.
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Diabetes care is most effective when provided as a team approach.
DiaTrends is simple, intuitive, flexible and networkable. It functions readily in a multi-user environment, allowing a collaborative effort by diabetes educators and other members of your diabetes care team. Key diabetes education indicators
(dates and topics) can be tracked. DiaTrends enhances opportunities for patients to become active participants in their care.
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Negotiating effectively with managed care organizations requires current, persuasive aggregate data on your population of diabetes patients.
DiaTrends puts you in the driver's seat when it comes time to discuss your role in providing primary or consultative care for people with diabetes. It serves as a “case manager” and as the focal point in disease state management of diabetes. Managed care organizations have limited data. You will be armed with reliable and detailed population-specific data that would be the envy of any managed care company! You can even quickly generate a report showing how you are doing in relation to the HEDIS
® diabetes measures. You alone are in the best position to know how to use your data to create better outcomes at a lower cost. Obviously, this will put you at a competitive advantage in any negotiation process.
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In the coming years, physicians will increasingly be scrutinized by outside parties with their own data and their own agendas. Health plans are getting serious about diabetes management, especially physician adherence to diabetes guidelines.
Managed care organizations can wield their physician performance data like a
club. Eventually all patients are likely to have access to comparative information (meaningful or not) on physicians.
DiaTrends allows you to stay a step ahead of the data game and its implicit
threats. You will be confident of your adherence to whichever diabetes
guidelines may be chosen by managed care organizations and others who will be
grading your performance on their own terms. Don't underestimate the strategic
advantage of knowing your data first!
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Consumers, such as patients with diabetes, are increasingly searching for high quality, efficient, interactive healthcare.
DiaTrends provides a clear marketing advantage for your practice. Your patients will be impressed that you’re using state-of-the-art technology to assist with their care. Patient handouts, such as their HbA1c report cards (graphically showing their HbA1c trend over time, and explaining what it means) will reinforce to your patients that you want them to be active participants in their own care. Increased patient satisfaction is assured.
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Physicians and other diabetes care providers need the opportunity to compare key indicators of their diabetes care with others.
DiaTrends allows participants in certain quality improvement initiatives to easily submit their DiaTrends data (blinded, of course, to patient identifiers)
to Overlook Software to be pooled with data from other participants. Overlook Software then
sends periodic aggregate data summaries back to these providers, who can then use their
DiaTrends "Report Generator" to see how their data compares with the pooled data. This helps identify areas for continual quality improvement, and provides another incentive to
aggressively treat to target.
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Physicians must be able to adapt to today's rapidly changing environment.
DiaTrends is updated and enhanced on a regular basis to reflect new standards of care, new medications, and user feedback. Overlook Software, Inc. is committed to ongoing research and development aimed at keeping you at the cutting edge.
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We hope you share our excitement about the potential for this unique product to benefit your practice and to significantly improve the care and outcomes of your diabetes patients. Renew your commitment to better diabetes care. And be able to prove it!
Would you like to join us now as a participant in this important endeavor by
using DiaTrends v. 4.1.36 in your practice? Please contact us at:
Overlook Software, Inc.
1002 N. Church Street, Suite 400
Greensboro, NC 27401-1440 | USA
(336) 274-0066 -
phone/voice mail
(336) 378-0867 - fax
