Diabetes Mine has a full report on the Diabetes Technology Society Payers Meeting held Nov 5.
Here is an excerpt:
You may remember that DTS Director Dr. David Klonoff and his team have been working on this program for many months, assembling aSteering Committeeof experts andlaying out detailsin September. FDA appears to be supportive, and of course the patient community has lobbied hard via the grassrootsStripSafelymovement for this important program to assure the accuracy of the blood glucose meters and test strips our lives depend on.
The next challenge in making this a reality is to gain consensus amongst the healthcare establishment. And Klonoff is convinced that the buy-in of payers (health insurers) is key, because if they dont see the value in this after-market testing for quality assurance of diabetes tools, theyll just keep pushing patients to accept the cheapest (and least reliable!) products, and the manufacturers will have no incentive to cooperate with the quality testing program.
So we had thisPayers Meeting, in which glucose monitoring and quality assurance experts, clinicians, lawyers and engaged patients spoke. (I was proud to be on a panel alongside D-advocates Manny Hernandez, Christel Aprigliano and three other adult type 1s.)
The only problem was: there were hardly any payers present. By hardly any I mean one gentleman from Humana on a panel, who was very engaging and informative, and a lady from CMS in the audience who many recognized but did not raise her hand when the speakers repeatedly asked, who is here from a payer organization?
More:http://www.diabetesmine.com/2014/11/glucose-meter-accuracy-payers-meeting-sort-of.html