San Francisco-based Carbon Health said it is launching an omnichannel care approach to diabetes management that combines at-home continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices with direct access to an interdisciplinary care team available in-person and virtually.
The program includes the integration of Steady Health, a virtual diabetes care provider Carbon Health acquired in June 2021, which enables Carbon Health to adopt CGM-based care as the standard for diabetes management.
With the full integration of Steady Health, Carbon Health said it is able to simplify diabetes management with CGM monitoring and logging that provides a complete picture of a patient’s health in one experience for both patients and providers. All data is collected and aggregated in the Carbon Health Electronic Medical Record (EMR), where all members of the care team –including endocrinologists, diabetes educators, and primary care providers – can collaborate on the patient’s care plan and ongoing management.
The depth and continuous nature of the CGM data allows Carbon Health providers to closely manage glucose control and time in range more effectively, a key metric and surrogate for A1c that the American Diabetes Association recognized for the first time in its 2022 standards of care as offering superior insights for personalizing a patient’s diabetes management plan, the company said.
Carbon Health said it has partnered with Abbott and Dexcom to seamlessly integrate CGM data into Carbon Health’s EMR and patient app, making the data easily accessible for both patients and providers. Carbon Health providers can see patient-generated logs of meals, exercise, and medications overlaid against continuous data of glucose values to drive smarter care recommendations and treatment decisions. Carbon Health says this makes it one of the first health systems to integrate native CGM data as a standard feature of its EMR platform.
“There is severe fragmentation within the U.S. healthcare system, putting enormous pressure on patients and providers: there are broken handoffs between medical professionals, information is siloed, and providers aren’t able to provide holistic, continuous care,” said Myoung Cha, chief strategy officer and president of Omnichannel Care at Carbon Health, in a statement. “We are launching our diabetes program to eliminate these broken handoffs while also transforming chronic care management and setting the standard of omnichannel care not only for ourselves, but for the entire industry.”
In pilots at Carbon Health clinics, 80 percent of diabetes patients achieved the guideline-recommended time in range goal of 70 percent within six weeks, despite an average baseline HbA1c value of 9.3 percent. This level of satisfactory glycemic control, roughly equivalent to a HbA1c of 7.0 percent, was maintained by 80 percent of patients at a median follow-up period of 15 weeks, the company said.
“Our pilot program proved patients with uncontrolled diabetes can achieve significant glycemic improvements by working with CGMs and a virtual multidisciplinary care team to provide continuous clinical feedback and support,” said Dr. Calvin Wu, Medical Director of Virtual Diabetes Care and endocrinologist at Carbon Health, in a statement. “Our diabetes program will truly revolutionize chronic care management and we look forward to seeing the impact increase as we scale.”
Wu and team also recently published a study in JMIR Diabetes showcasing the positive impact of their care model on glycemic outcomes. One year into the study, patients with uncontrolled type 1 and type 2 diabetes were maintaining their blood glucose in the desired range for four additional hours per day while minimizing hypoglycemia, and many were trained remotely to use advanced diabetes technologies including connected insulin pens and insulin pumps.
Carbon Health also recently announced a strategic partnership with Froedtert Health, a Milwaukee-based integrated healthcare system, designed to increase diverse points of healthcare access, enhance convenience for patients, and redefine healthcare delivery in the Wisconsin market.
Carbon Health and Froedtert Health will partner to create primary care and urgent care clinics in new and existing markets to complement the current offerings within the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) health network, beginning in early 2023.
With this partnership, the Froedtert & MCW health network is joining Carbon Health Connect,an ecosystem that organizes healthcare around the patient. Launched in November 2021, Carbon Health Connect works with health systems and specialty providers to increase access, streamline referral workflows, and integrate health data to deliver seamless, patient-driven care to more communities. This partnership brings Carbon Health’s modern clinics and omnichannel care model to Froedtert & MCW health network patients, delivering care across a variety of access points including in-person clinics, virtual care and remote patient monitoring (RPM). In turn, Carbon Health patients in the area will have access to the Froedtert & MCW health network suite of services, including when Carbon Health patients require ancillary and specialty care within eastern Wisconsin’s only academic health network.