Joslin Diabetes Center conference survey highlights "troubling non-alignment" in key areas of diabetes care

The Joslin Diabetes Center, one of the world’s largest diabetes research and clinical care organizations, and WorldOne, a global leader in healthcare data collection, released the results of their comparative outlook survey on emerging diabetes trends during the Joslin’s Diabetes Innovation 2012 conference, and the results were startling.

The twin surveys showed stark differences of opinion from 150 WorldOne primary care physicians and endocrinologists and a live audience of 450 delegates attending the Diabetes Innovation 2012 conference, including payers, purchasers, providers, and suppliers, according to a press release from WorldOne.

• Only 16% of physicians agree that pharmacists should be able to serve as primary care providers for people with diabetes versus 55% of the conference delegates.

• In terms of weight management and obesity reduction, 67% of physicians agree that pharmaceutically assisted interventions are necessary compared with only 45% of delegates.

• About 17% of physicians believe that risk identification and screening, such as metabolic levels and biomarkers, will have a positive impact on clinical outcomes for diabetes patients versus only 9% of delegates.

“These results are very important to us and our mission,” said Julie A. Brown, Joslin’s executive director of diabetes innovation and global professional education. “With Diabetes Innovation 2012, its vital that all stakeholders are aligned, and we understand beliefs and concerns that may derail progress towards a more effective system. If stakeholder groups’ concerns are not understood or ignored, we won’t realize the true cooperation we need to make any sustained, valuable improvement.”

To review all the survey results from the physician cohort, click here.

In March, Sermo, a large online physician community now owned and operated by WorldOne, and Joslin agreed to create a series of programs and publish research studies to engage the community, relying on key opinion leaders and other industry experts to moderate the discussion and synthesize key findings. In July, Sermo was purchased by WorldOne, and the combined company has access to 150,000 primary care physicians and 6,000 endocrinologists in the United States and 1 million physicians worldwide.

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