Northeast Georgia picks platform to aid diabetes therapy management

At Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, about half of critical care patients are diagnosed with diabetes or at risk of hyperglycemia while in the hospital.

That’s why the organization—part of four-hospital Northeast Georgia Health System—has partnered with Glytec, which offers an FDA-approved eGlycemic Management platform to enable mass personalization of insulin across the continuum of care. The vendor supports programs combining evidence-based decision support tools with expert professional services to help providers achieve best practices that can reduce hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, A1C, readmissions, length of stay and costs.

“Challenges with insulin therapy are well-documented and, as a high-alert medication, considerable safety precautions are imperative,” says Cindy Danner, associate chief nursing officer. “We are confident the eGlycemic Management System will evaluate our nurses’ ability to deliver the best care to every patient and will remove many of the difficulties and demands posed by manual processes.”

Suhel Patel, MD, a medical director at Northeast Georgia Physicians Group, says with adoption of the technology and services, patients will receive insulin therapy that is personalized to their individual needs and designed to support their recovery and transitions of care. “We’ll have a single platform for managing insulin therapy across all of our acute care facilities, and it will be interoperable with our Epic EHR, which means every clinician will be equipped to execute against best practices at all times.”


Here are other new contracts and go-lives reported during the past week:

• Oregon Health & Science University will implement the Provider Match platform of Kyruus to enhance patient access to providers and services across the delivery system. The platform will unify disparate data sources and develop profiles with engagement from providers on their clinical areas of focus. Among other services, the vendor also offers a library enabling patient-provider matching based on consumer-friendly search terms.

• A partnership between Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Kentucky with Renew Recovery, a substance abuse treatment center, will help consumers covered through employer-based and individual health plans to have access to treatment that enables them to addiction treatments in their own homes. This is the first program of its kind in the state. Those meeting the criteria will undergo a highly personalized in-home treatment program for up to two months, then transition to an outpatient model of care for as long as two years.

• Yale School of Medicine has a new licensing agreement with Sharecare to supplement its curriculum with content from the vendor for virtual training and instruction. The software enables users to visualize how the body works and explore organs and systems in an anatomically accurate 3D environment. The online program is first being used this summer in a cardiology course and once the course is completed the school will evaluate student engagement, information retention and satisfaction levels among students and faculty for potential future applications in medical education settings.

• Texas Health Resources and Premier have launched a regional supply chain organization to improve total cost management for healthcare organization across North Texas. Texas Health, with 26 hospitals, has worked with Premier for more than 20 years. “As we focus on the future of healthcare in North Texas, we must continue to innovate across every aspect of care,” says Shaun Clinton, senior vice president of supply chain management at Texas Health. The alliance, he adds, will enable Texas Health Resources to more effectively source certain products and services at the local level.