GO! Diabetes :: News On The GO!

Thank you from the GO! Diabetes faculty and leadership team for making this year's program an astounding success. Our greatest success can't be measured only via METRIC. The changes and improvement you are making reflects in our patient care which results in better lives and a brighter future for your patients. Those are the success stories with immeasurable worth.

How do you fully capture the difference you've made in someone's life and family? You don't. You just keep pressing on knowing generational change starts somewhere.

Kudos to all of you for contributing your ideas, working extra hours, implementing new processes, and encouraging GO! Diabetes team members in your residency programs and private practices to dig in and forge ahead despite push-backs, budgetary constraints, deeply rooted processes, and busy schedules. You are champions of change.

Marketing Guru and Author Seth Godin said, "We're surrounded by people who are busy getting their ducks in a row, waiting for just the right moment. Getting your ducks in a row is a fine thing to do. But deciding what you are going to do with that duck is a far more important issue." We're proud of our GO! Diabetes Change Agents and their teams for giving all their "ducks" something important and meaningful to do.

We heard some of your stories at the GO! Diabetes Summits. We know what you're doing to make lasting change doesn't end there. There are more summits to reach.

METRIC deadline for entering all follow-up data is Dec. 20 in order to be included in our final report. You should have received an email from METRIC once your 90-day lock out ended. Log back into METRIC on the aafp.org website and go to "continue module."

Centered on diabetes registries and patient care, the Oklahoma GO! Diabetes Summit was attended by more than 40 residents and practicing physicians. The program was designed to provide tools for the family physician and other clinical team members to better diagnose, manage and prevent diabetes.

Drs. Linda Oberst-Walsh and James Beebe opened the session with an overview of how they brought the Master Clinician Diabetes Registry to the Oklahoma University Department of Family Medicine Clinic in Tulsa, OK. (A copy of Dr. Beebe's PowerPoint presentation is posted under Resources at godiabetes.org.) One of GO! Diabetes' faculty members Adrienne Mims, MD, MPH conducted an interactive presentation in team building and improving the processes of care for diabetes.

Using videotaped encounters and role plays with patients with diabetes, Larry McCauley, EdD discussed how to overcome barriers in patient care. OAFP President Brad McIntosh, MD talked with attendees about how he took his GO! Diabetes "Train the Trainer" event and message back to his clinic in Muskogee, OK. Jim Mold, MD reinforced key strategies in treating diabetic patients followed by roundtable discussions of actual diabetes case presentations.

OAFP Executive Vice President, Sam Blackstock, CAE was pleased at the outcome. "This is exactly what we had hoped for with the Oklahoma GO! Diabetes Summit – bringing together family medicine residents and physicians to learn and discuss new and improved ways to treat their increasing population of patients with diabetes."

With a full docket, including the research poster competition and an interactive role playing presentation, the highlight of the Atlanta Summit was a morning spent sharing lessons learned and "ah-ha" moments facilitated by Project Director Susan Reichman and Saria Carter Saccocio, MD, GO! Diabetes faculty member.

Communication. Although our message was the same, we discovered the message shared in the group visits was heard and embraced totally different. Our group visit patients significantly changed their behavior.

Complete. We learned how to best engage our clinical team to gather information. We implemented a "cheat sheet" to cover pertinent questions before the physician entered the room. We used a template for a patient report card to help our patients become more involved in their care.

Purpose. The program helped jumpstart our multidisciplinary team to work toward a common goal through this change process.

Advocacy. Since we put educational posters in exam rooms, our patients are now proactively asking for tests.

Consistency. GO! Diabetes has provided consistency in our care of patients with diabetes by helping us put into place guidelines and flow sheets that reveal what's missing in our care.

Teamwork. Seeing results from the hard work of creating a patient registry paid off with our first group visit. The team buy-in and buzz was positive.

Vision. We're seeing the benefit of creating the patient registry for diabetes caused some people to say "when are we going to start one for asthma?" The program has made a big impact – we're more willing to move to the next level by instituting group visits.

Comprehensive. We are now using all available resources to provide the best care in one visit. We now have a team approach to diabetes care.

Conviction. I had to work on creating a transitional mindset within our residency program. We face a lot of red tape. We had the opportunity to change perceptions of residents and faculty and it worked!

Proactive. All of our residents are now more proactive in their patient care. We've seen positive change in every area of our patient report cards. Now we believe we're giving our patients the proper and best care.

"The reflections and input of the Change Agents and their team members illustrated the reach and depth of the GO! Diabetes program on their residency programs and private practices represented from across the nation," said Fay Brown, MHS, executive vice president of the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians. "It was inspiring to have that many forces of change in one room."