Matthew Bouchonville, medical director of the Endocrinology TeleECHO Clinic, said Endocrinology experts will be tracking various diabetes-related outcomes during the three-year pilot project.
“We are excited to get started and grateful that the Helmsley Charitable Trust saw the potential for the ECHO model to expand capacity to deliver the best care possible for patients with complex diabetes and other endocrinologic disorders,” Bouchonville said.
As part of the project, a panel of specialists, including an adult endocrinologist, a pediatric endocrinologist, a nephrologist, a psychiatrist, social worker and other health workers, will provide weekly “tele-mentoring” — delivering endocrine related training and receiving case presentations — to rural primary care clinicians at eight Endo ECHO Centers of Excellence around the state.
“The goal during this period of time is to develop expertise in these individuals in managing patients with complex diabetes and other endocrinologic disorders such as thyroid and metabolic bone disease,” he said. “Each Endocrine Champion (trainee) is partnered with a community health worker who follows the diabetic patients very closely, providing health coaching and motivating behavior change.”
Bouchonville said the team has partnered with eight clinics around the state of New Mexico and have started in-person trainings.
“The trainings will be followed in the near future with weekly telementoring with the upcoming launch of the Endocrinology TeleECHO Clinic,” he said.
He said they have recruited “an outstanding lineup of rural primary care clinicians. They are eager to become Endocrine Champions.”
According to ECHO officials, there is a shortage of endocrinologists in the United States and patients are suffering as a result. Project officials claim this model of healthcare “demonopolizes” the knowledge of the medical specialists by spreading it to rural clinicians using teleconferences.
“This, in turn, builds capacity for providing quality care to patients with complex diabetes and other endocrinologic disorders,” Bouchonville said.
Bouchonville said the idea for the Endo ECHO program was originally raised by Dr. Sanjeev Arora, the liver disease specialist at UNM who founded Project ECHO, in collaboration with the Helmsley Charitable Trust.
“The ECHO model breaks down the walls between primary and specialty care by demonopolizing medical knowledge. In this way, more patients can get better care sooner, in their own communities,” Arora said in a press release.
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The Helmsley Charitable Trust has also awarded a separate grant to New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service to conduct an evaluation of Endo ECHO, assessing its impact on patient outcomes in New Mexico, a press release issued by the trust said.
“In the diabetes community, we know there are challenges facing endocrinology as a medical specialty. Endocrinologist shortage means patients with type 1 and other complex diabetes conditions rely on under-trained primary care providers, often resulting in poor outcomes,” said Eliot Brenner, program director for the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s Type 1 Diabetes Program, in the press release.
ECHO plans to expand this model on a broader scale in the future.
“We anticipate that several thousand patients with complex diabetes and other endocrinologic disorders will be impacted by this project,” Bouchonville said.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
