What a fabulous start to this week - attending the 2019 AADE Public Policy Meeting in Washington DC with approximately 60 national colleagues, representing 35 states. Wonderful advocacy discussions and updates on Monday, followed by the ability on Tuesday to meet with Senators and Congressmen and women to discuss and educate on Senate Bill S814 and House Bill HB1840 - Expanding Diabetes Self-Management Training Act. Our goal was to try to increase the number of co-sponsors. Was at 14 co-sponsors on Tuesday and now at 15... but there is more to obtain and we need your help to do so.
The bill would:
- Allow additional providers (eg hospital, ED) managing diabetes care to make referrals to DSMT/DSME (Currently restricted to the treating provider)
- Eliminate patient co-pays and deductibles for this with Medicare
- Allow patients an unlimited amount of time to use their initial 10 hours of DSMT/DSME (instead of having to use it over a 12 month period of time)
- Cover an additional 6 hours of care each year, if needed (beyond the current 2 hours)
- Allow hospital outpatient programs to offer diabetes education in community settings eg churches, libraries
- Establish a 2 year demonstration program for coverage of a virtual DSMT program under Medicare.
Please reach out to your U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative and encourage them to co-sponsor the S 814 bill (for the Senators) and HB1840 (for the Representative).
AADE has made support easy - Just go to the legislative action center on the AADE website to send a letter at: http://advocate.diabeteseducator.org/site/PageServer?pagename=action_center
Together, we can influence care delivery and access for people living with diabetes to our incredible services.