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As a group of aspiring health professionals who have personal connections to diabetes, we read your study with great interest. With diabetes affecting approximately 34 million Americans, ~90% of whom are receiving care through their primary care physician, we believe studies like this are critical in examining disparities in diabetes care. In particular, we acknowledged that continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) utilization barriers in primary care were closely tied to medical insurance issues and CGM training.
We found it interesting that practices with greater than 50% of patients covered by Medicare were more likely to prescribe CGM. How has Medicare’s 2021 expansion led to greater accessibility of CGMs for diabetic patients? Does this expansion make primary care physicians more likely to integrate CGM use into diabetic treatment? Overall, we would like to ask the authors why they believe there is a significant difference in the likelihood of physicians prescribing CGM based on the insurance coverage of their patient populations and how can insurance policy universally improve to increase the accessibility of CGM?
Concurrently, we also found it interesting that 72.3% of survey respondents indicated that they were likely to prescribe CGM with access to CGM education/training workshops. Additionally, 62.2% of respondents said they were likely to prescribe CGM with access to a CGM educational website. In summary, the study found that clinicians are lacking educational resources to justify prescribing CGM, and this again led us to ask further questions. In your opinion, what would be the most efficient educational method to balance the demand CGM training places on both the patient and clinician? Do you believe CGM training should be universally implemented into a clinician’s required annual education and development?
Again, continuing to expand studies of this nature is critical in examining and addressing disparities within diabetes care. Ultimately, continuing this work will lead to the enhancement of diabetes care and drastically improve the quality of life for diabetic patients.