Dr Jaime Davidson on Collaboration Between Providers for Patients With Diabetes

Collaboration between cardiologists and endocrinologists are necessary when caring with patients with diabetes who have had cardiovascular issues in the past, said Jaime A. Davidson, MD, FACP, MACE, professor of medicine, Touchstone Diabetes Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Transcript

How can endocrinologists, cardiologists, and primary care providers collaborate to improve care for people with diabetes?

I think that this is the time to start thinking about collaboration between cardiologists and endocrinologists. We have some collaboration with primary care, because actually primary care is the first step where a patient is seen. The biggest problem is diabetes is changing too rapidly. We have new guidelines every year. We have new medications every year. We have new data on cardiovascular outcome trials. And according to the RAND Corporation, it takes many years for all the new information to get into the clinician.

I can tell you also that once a patient with diabetes has any cardiovascular issues, they see the cardiologist 5 more times than the endocrinologist. So, we need to keep the cardiologist updated on how to treat diabetes and what drugs are best for the patients if they already have previous cardiovascular events.