Effect of Remote Patient Monitoring and Patient Education on Patient Activation and Glycemic Control in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes

Effect of Remote Patient Monitoring and Patient Education on Patient Activation and Glycemic Control in Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes

Summary

ABSTRACT

In 2021, the MaineHealth Telehealth team was awarded a five-year, $1.7 million "Evidence-Based Telehealth Network Program" grant (EB TNPG) from Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). This grant is aimed at improving patient access to educational and management services for patients with type 2 diabetes in the rural Maine primary care setting by implementing RPM. The RPM devices will be used to transmit a participant's home point-of-care blood glucose values directly into MaineHealth's electronic medical record in real time. While there is strong evidence for diabetes self-management programs such as Living Well with Diabetes, the importance of patient engagement in clinical outcomes, the validity of the Patient Activation Measure (PAM-13®) survey to measure patient activation, and the overall efficacy of remote patient monitoring, there have been no randomized controlled trials looking at patient activation in remote patient monitoring in this important patient group. The investigators aim to address this in this study by conducting a randomized controlled trial of the use of RPM among rural patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes. The control group will have usual primary care provider care, including patient self-management tools, while the intervention group will have usual care + RPM.

The investigators hypothesize that participation in RPM will be associated with decreases in HbA1c, increases in patient activation as measured by PAM-13® survey, and that increases in patient activation will be associated with decreases in HbA1c.