Structuring and Organizing Interprofessional Healthcare in Partnership with Patients with Diabetes: The INterprofessional Management and Education in Diabetes Care (INMED) Pathway

Researchers characterized the INterprofessional Management and Education in Diabetes (INMED) care pathway and the preliminary results of its implementation. INMED integrates essential elements to augment the quality of primary care services framed in the Extended Chronic Care Model and Diabetes Canada Clinical Practice Guidelines. The pathway spans interventional branches of continuing professional education (CPE), ongoing patient education/self-management support, case management/interprofessional team follow-up and continuous evaluation of diabetes quality of care and services. Increasing adoption and implementation of best practices and learning on the CPE branch involved guideline reminders and adapted clinical tools. INMED's assessment was guided by the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework in conjunction with continuous quality improvement. Preliminary results cited regular patient follow-up by case managers, scheduling of physician appointments when necessary and regular risk factor screening as program strengths. Obstacles included little clarity about the case manager role, few case manager referrals to other team members and scarce use of the motivational interviewing approach to encourage patients' adoption of healthy behaviors. The authors concluded that teams can apply RE-AIM "to progressively identify and find new ways to overcome the adoption and implementation challenges to improve the care pathway's reach, effectiveness and maintenance for people living with type 2 diabetes."

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