Controlling Health Care Costs By Listening to Patients

Health care costs in the United States are in the trillions, and finding solutions to cut costs are becoming critical for medical care sustainability. During a conversation with health leaders about health care cost-cutting, experts made a simple argument: listen to patients. During the discussion, which took place Tuesday at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Health conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif., Jared Watkin, senior vice president of Diabetes Care at Abbott, spoke to assembled industry leaders about how the company re-developed one of its continuous glucose monitors (CGM) called the FreeStyle Libre—a device that reads blood sugar levels automatically throughout the day—in order to better meet users needs and save costs. If they didn’t listen to patients, Watkin said, “CGMs were going to continue to be a niche product in diabetes management.” An early iteration of the FreeStyle Libre device ended up being too costly to manufacture, Watkin said, and was too complicated and pricey for the people using the device. The company realized it wasn’t meeting the needs of its customers and made changes. The team created a less bulky device that was more affordable—and it resonated well with the diabetes community. Katherine Steinberg, vice president for the Center for Healthcare Transformation at Avalere Health, discussed how at a prior job at UCLA, patients were brought in to talk to doctors and innovators at the hospital about what n...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Abbott cgm Cleveland Clinic Cosgrove diabetes Fortune Brainstorm Health Freestyle Libre Health Care healthytime Source Type: news