Siemens Healthineers, Hill-Rom Team Up Against Diabetes

Siemens Healthineers and Hill-Rom signed a co-marketing agreement to provide a suite of point-of-care diagnostic instruments that, for the first time, enable primary healthcare providers in the U.S. to bridge gaps in diabetes care and satisfy value-based quality measures in a single office visit. The integrated offering incorporates the Siemens Healthineers DCA Vantage Analyzer for HbA1c testing, the CLINITEK Status+ Urine Chemistry Analyzer for kidney checks, and Hill-Rom’s Welch Allyn RetinaVue Network and imaging technology for teleretinal exams.
 
Currently, more than 90 percent of U.S. payers use value-based quality measures such as the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System to assess provider performance and evaluate whether healthcare providers are taking steps to improve patient outcomes.¹ Providing comprehensive care for diabetes is an essential performance criterion within these quality measures.
 
Diabetes and comorbidities such as diabetic retinopathy and diabetic nephropathy cost the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars annually.² Healthcare systems endeavor to adopt holistic, streamlined and efficient solutions that will reduce this cost burden. The patient-centered solution from Siemens Healthineers and Hill-Rom offers physicians more control over patient care by accomplishing proactive testing and treatment during a single visit. This improved workflow may reduce costs and eliminate inconvenient follow-up visits, leading to higher patient satisfaction and compliance with care regimens. Comprehensive point-of-care testing for diabetes has improved patient outcomes.³ Studies show that by reducing a patient’s HbA1c level by one percent, the risk of kidney damage and eye damage also is reduced by 50 percent and 76 percent, respectively.⁴ More than 80 percent of Americans living with diabetes will eventually develop diabetic retinopathy⁵—the leading cause of blindness among working age adults.⁶ With early detection, 95 percent of vision loss can be prevented,⁷ yet less than half of patients with diabetes get an annual eye exam.⁸
 
“A patient’s quality of life declines significantly when chronic diseases remain untreated, which is why testing for comorbidities is so important,” said Mike Sampson, senior vice president of Point of Care Diagnostics, North America, Siemens Healthineers. “Our new commercial relationship with Hill-Rom will provide holistic, easy-to-implement solutions that aid in combating diabetes and related comorbidities while satisfying value-based quality care measures. With operator-friendly analyzers that generate lab-quality results in minutes and capabilities to integrate test results with electronic health records, physicians can make immediate treatment decisions and improve long-term outcomes.”
 
Siemens Healthineers contributes to the joint offering with point-of-care solutions that aid in combating chronic diseases before they become critical. The DCA Vantage Analyzer monitors a patient’s glycemic control in minutes with CLIA-waived HbA1c testing. With the CLINITEK Status+ Urine Chemistry Analyzer, healthcare providers can perform a kidney check in 60 seconds with CLIA-waived albumin-to-creatinine ratio testing.
 
With Hill-Rom’s Welch Allyn RetinaVue Network offering, physicians perform in-office diabetic retinal exams, capturing images in seconds with nonmydriatic cameras. The images are transmitted through HIPAA-compliant software for interpretation by a nationwide team of board-certified ophthalmologists. Evaluating retinal health in primary care settings can be highly effective— with some achieving over 90 percent diabetic retinal eye exam compliance in a single year,⁹ resulting in timely, vision-saving treatment.
 
“Hill-Rom and Siemens Healthineers share a common vision to put patients on a better path to healthcare by providing solutions that allow our customers to transform care delivery with greater efficiency and effectiveness,” saidAlton Shader, president of Hill-Rom’s Front Line Care business, which includes Welch Allyn. “We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us and we are excited to activate this vision.”
 
Hill-Rom’s Welch Allyn RetinaVue Network is the largest tele-ophthalmology services network in the U.S., serving more than 2,000 primary care clinics and partnering with leading commercial health plans and insurers nationwide. RetinaVue, P.C. is the first tele-ophthalmology services network to receive The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval for Ambulatory Health Care Accreditation. Siemens Healthineers is the largest manufacturer of point-of-care solutions for diabetes and urinalysis testing.
 
References
¹ http://www.ncqa.org/hedis-quality-measurement
² http://www.diabetes.org/assets/pdfs/basics/cdc-statistics-report-2017.pdf
³ Medical and Surgical Clinic of Irving Rajiv Dattatreya, MD. Customer testimonial. Signed release on file.
⁴ DCCT; UKPD; ADA Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes, 2005. Bode BW (ed.). Medical management of type 1 diabetes.
⁵ Preferred Practice Pattern Guidelines, page 6. American Academy of Ophthalmology; 2014. www.aao.org/ppp.
⁶ CDC Vision Health Initiative (VHI), Common Eye Disorders. www.cdc.gov/visionhealth/basics/ced/index.html
⁷ National Eye Institute, Facts About Diabetic Eye Disease. https://nei.nih.gov/health/diabetic/retinopathy
⁸ Monitoring Visual Status: Why Patients Do or Do Not Comply with Practice Guidelines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361077/
⁹ Comparing the Effectiveness of Telemedicine and Traditional Surveillance in Providing Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Examinations: A Randomized Controlled Trial https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24102102