Refer Medicare Patients for Free Diabetes Prevention Program

This year, beginning April 1, our Medicare patients will be able to attend programs to help prevent diabetes. These programs are certified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are paid for by Medicare. They last 16 sessions and are based on the model used in the Diabetes Prevention Program.^[1] Thus, we know that this model works. Although we also know that online programs can be effective, at the moment, Medicare will only pay for in-person programs.

I believe that this is an important benefit for our patients who are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and let me expand a bit further. In the Diabetes Prevention Program, they actually showed that older patients were somewhat better than younger patients at adhering to lifestyle changes. Even though we may believe that you can't teach old dogs new tricks, the older participants defied this. We saw the same thing in the Look AHEAD Study^[2]; you can help patients change some of their lifestyle habits.

In the Diabetes Prevention Program, people did not have to lose 50 pounds. They only had to lose 7% to 10% of their body weight and keep it off to prevent the progression to diabetes.