PTS Pulse

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Steve Riendeau on Pais Positivio

PTS Diagnostics CCO Steve Riendeau
Featured in País Positivo

The following interview with PTS Diagnostics CCO Steve Riendeau recently appeared in the November issue of País Positivo, a monthly editorial magazine on current affairs in Portugal. The original article, written in Portuguese, can be found here. The text below is an English translation.

Master Your Diabetes

Steve Riendeau, Commercial Director of PTS Diagnostics, presents us innovative solutions for people with diabetes, tests for professional or outpatient use with fast, reliable and accurate results.

With regards to the portfolio in the field of diabetes, what can be highlighted?

PTS Diagnostics is the manufacturer of the A1CNow®+ Test System for professional use and the A1CNow® Self Check at-home systems.  Both systems are able to test a person’s A1C using a small fingerstick blood sample and calcuate the result in 5 minutes. The product is NGSP-certified and IFCC-traceable. What sets A1CNow apart from traditional large lab analzyers is that it is small, portable, and battery-powered. Thisallows for ease of use in a variety of settings.

 The A1CNow+ professional product line allows for informed conversations to take place at the point of care between physician and patient. They can discuss how a patient is managing their diabetes in minutes and not have to wait a few days for the test results to come back.

For many individuals living with diabetes  thi could bes as a “game changer” in that they can have a direct insight into the effectiveness of their glucose management efforts and take the proper actions to either maintain or improve those efforts it moving forward. 

How is PTS Diagnostics addressing the future of patient care?

At present, new models of addressing and accessing patient health care have led to an increased focus on closing gaps in care as discrepancies between the recommended medical practices and the care that’s being provided continue. The health care industry is in search of better ways to fill in the gaps.

Those gaps in care are the difference between the health care that we are receiving and what is considered medical best practices. These are becoming increasingly an issue due to the current COVID-19 environment, because getting access to health care has been more challenging for people.

An examples of a gap in care would be where you are supposed to be getting an age-related screening and you’ve missed that screening.  As a result, you may be missing some insight into your health

We have the ability to help close those gaps utilizing our point of care solutions. PTS Diagnostics, bring certified accuracy, precision and speed together to innovate point of care. 

Quality of life is important for diabetes patients. In response, what innovative solutions does PTS Diagnostics offer in order to facilitate the day-to-day life of these patients?

We have been in business for well over 20 years. Here in the U.S., we develop and manufacture a series of point-of-care instruments through which, with a simple fingerstick,  people can gain actionable insights into their health.

Our A1CNow+ test system offers those living with diabetes a method by which they can test their HbA1c and obtain anaccurate HbA1c result in a matter of minutes. This can give both healthcare physicians treating their diabetic patients and the patients themselves, a direct look into how a patient’s diabetes is being managed. Based upon the result calculated, it allows for face-to-face dialogue and consultation between the healthcare provider and the patient.

Our A1CNow solutions are configured so they can be utilized in a professional healthcare facility, wellness event, or inside a patient’s home.  

How do PTS Diagnostics products combine technology and diagnostic solutions to facilitate patient/healthcare provider interaction?

One of the benefits of our devices is that the professional user can  have consultation directly with the patient and discuss their numbers, their
results, their understanding of how they’re managing these diseases. With our
diagnostics solutions, portable technology can deliver test results all at the
point of care, creating the ability for a patient’s medical information to be
shared in a matter of minutes rather than several days.

The key to success for patients in their long term health and well-being is their engagement or disease processes. There’s nothing that maximizes that better than having results of a test readily available and immediately discussed with the provider through its people,
technology and service.

Where do you see your technology being utilized more in the future?

Access to testing continues to improve  with the help of our technology in alternate health care settings such as the pharmacy, the workplace, telemedicine, and most recently inside the patient’s homes. The points of care have been redefined. Presently, we are now looking an increase in the care at home, with options from visiting nurses and other entities.

 

screenshot of article from Pais Positivo with a link to the full publication

There is nothing more valuable than being able to provide a lab test at that time of that visit. Pharmacies have now become a critical access point for patients because they have a tendency to go there frequently and can get several needs met at one time, as we’ve seen with COVID-19 vaccinations here. 

We see our point of care testing solutions fulfilling possible new roles and services that these sectors, particularly ones that the pharmacies are being asked to provide by terms of testing for cholesterol, glucose, etc. As the roles of the pharmacies are changing worldwide, we are growing with them through this time as evident by the work we’ve been focused on with groups such as Alphega Pharmacy.

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Bridge Purchasing Solutions Joins the PreVantage™ Partnership Network

Key strategic alliance as both companies work to close gaps in care for patients with chronic disease.

WHITESTOWN, Ind. (September 30, 2021) – PTS Diagnostics, a U.S.-based manufacturer of point-of-care medical testing devices, announced today that they have signed a strategic alliance agreement with Bridge Purchasing Solutions Inc. 

“Bridge has built a very unique digital voucher platform that helps payors and businesses who have employees that need point-of-care testing to provide increased access while closing critical care gaps related to cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” said Steve Riendeau, Chief Commercial Officer of PTS Diagnostics. “As a result of the pandemic, many people have been unable to get important annual biometrics such as cholesterol and A1C testing.  The Bridge platform allows electronic vouchers to be sent to an individual’s mobile phone where they can take it to a participating retail pharmacy to get the tests conducted. The platform also allows for seamless redemption of incentives which often accompany this testing. The PreVantage Partnership Network is focused on bringing companies together with a common mission of closing gaps in care for patients with chronic diseases and this is another opportunity for us to do so.  PTS feels strongly that this strategic alliance is a great fit for our customers.” 

PTS is a global leader in the production and distribution of point-of-care solutions. “It’s a privilege to be part of the PreVantage Network.” said Ken Erickson, CEO of Bridge Purchasing Solutions.  “Our next generation B2B2E (Business to Business to Employee) fintech platform makes it possible to issue digital payment cards directly to an employee which can only be redeemed at the specified retail pharmacy partner.  The frictionless payments, compliance reporting along with increased adherence are also keys to our future success.  When combined with the world class products from PTS we are convinced our clients will embrace the solution.”  

 

About PTS Diagnostics
PTS Diagnostics provides innovative, superior quality, point-of-care solutions.  Healthcare professionals have used our CardioChek. products to assess cardiovascular disease risks for millions of patients worldwide through lipid panel screening. Our A1CNow® systems, which provide fast and reliable HbA1c testing, have helped physicians deliver more effective treatments to patients with diabetes. For more information, visit ptsdiagnostics.com. 

About Bridge Purchasing Solutions
Bridge, an innovative FinTech company, is on a mission to remove the barriers that hinder compliance with a healthy lifestyle including education, access, and cost. Bridge works with employers, health plans, and other health advocates to educate and drive employees and members to low-cost retail providers. The bridge platform can be used to drive compliance with health activities such as immunizations and biometric screenings, encourage healthy food choices, track ongoing management of at-risk members and deliver reward incentives in near real time. To find out how Bridge can help you and your organization achieve your healthcare goals vision Bridgepurchasingsolutions.com or email info@Bridgemart.com. 

 

Press Contact:
Laurie Gutzwiller 
Executive Director, Marketing
317-870-8070
lgutzwiller@ptsdiagnostics.com

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Bringing the Hospital, and the Lab, Home

The home health industry had already been growing steadily for years before COVID-19 came along; but the pandemic, and the need for virtual, “socially distanced” health services that came with it, have exponentially accelerated that growth. It not only increased demand for home health services, but also prompted the U.S. to propose changes to government funding of home- and community-based services (HCBS).

At the time of this writing, members of the United States Congress are debating an infrastructure funding package that could include as much as $400 billion for home and community-based services (HCBS). 1 (Globally, U.S spending on HCBS is much lower than that of nearly all other developed countries.1) If that funding is approved, we will likely see much bigger investments in home health programs from both payors and provider agencies. But we may also see changes to policies on reimbursement for home health services that would require agencies to show evidence of improved health outcomes for their patients.

As a result, many home health agencies and hospital systems may need to invest in new tools and resources that will help them deliver high-quality care to the rapidly growing and changing population of home-based patients.

The Picture of Home Health

Many people still think of home health as an option that is only for people who have been discharged from a hospital or nursing home. But today, many home health service providers are tasked not only with helping patients who have left a hospital setting, but also preventing patients from being admitted to a hospital or nursing home

So, who are today’s home health patients? First, according to recent Medicare data, only one-third of patients were assigned to home health care after a hospital or nursing home stay. Two-thirds are referred to home health from the community. 2

Home health patients also tend to be people who need help managing complex comorbidities. Nearly 50 percent of them have five or more chronic conditions, such as asthma, arthritis, diabetes, or heart disease. Only 22.4% of all Medicare beneficiaries must manage that many conditions all at once.2

What Will Today’s Home Health Providers Need to Succeed?

To be most effective in serving the growing complexity of their patient population, home health providers must build a comprehensive system that includes not only hands-on care, but also remote patient monitoring, lab work, radiology, and medication delivery. And, to make the system work, they will need to find ways to enhance their ability to communicate and collaborate with all the members of a patient’s care team.3 Some experts also think that home health agencies may need to become more specialized, with specific programs dedicated to heart disease, diabetes, respiratory health and more. And, as they expand to offer these services and more, home health agencies will want to consider how to best improve quality of care while reducing costs. 3

One health outcome measurement that both government payors (Medicare) and private payers will likely track is hospital admissions and readmissions. There is already some evidence that home-based primary care can reduce ER visits, hospitalizations, and 30-day readmissions for homebound patients. Early results of a 5-year Medicare program called Independence at Home showed not only these reductions in hospitalizations, but also an average annual cost savings of $2,700 per beneficiary.3

How Can Point-of-Care Testing Help?

Some healthcare providers have expressed reluctance over a broad shift to home health. One of the reasons often cited is that patients may not be continuously monitored at home in the same ways they are in a hospital, skilled nursing facility, or nursing home. They worry that subtle but significant changes in a patient’s vital signs or biometric measurements might be missed, and along with it, the chance to adjust treatment in a way that could improve and prolong the patient’s life.

But advancements in remote patient monitoring, medical records sharing, and rapid biometric testing can help ensure that a patient’s health status can be closely tracked at home, and that any necessary adjustments to the patient’s treatment plan based on those on changes can be quickly communicated to the home care team and the patient.

One example is in tracking lipid panel and A1C results for home-based patients with heart disease and diabetes. Regularly tracking these two metrics in addition to other vital signs and biometric measurements may help providers identify which patients are at the highest risk for eventual hospitalizations due to less-than-optimal management of their conditions.

Some studies have shown that reducing cholesterol levels that are too high can lessen the risk of heart attack or heart-disease related death4, and optimal control of blood glucose can make a difference in reducing diabetes complications.5 Furthermore, some evidence shows that poor glycemic control in patients with diabetes is associated with an increase hospitalization due to heart disease or any other cause.6

The ability for home health providers to gather accurate lipid panel and A1C results at the patient’s home in minutes, instead of the usual days or weeks it can take to get test results from a lab can make a difference in two ways:

– It can improve overall workflow efficiency, resulting in a related reduction in staff time and costs.

– It gives providers the opportunity to get same-visit feedback on their progress and setback in terms of their glucose and cholesterol control. Prompt feedback can help make new information “stick” and can help motivate patients to act on new knowledge they have gained. 7

When you combine these added efficiencies with better informed and more engaged patients, and with highly-skilled healthcare providers, you have a winning formula for high-value/low-cost service—something that both patients and payors like to see.

While the finer details of home health care policies in the U.S. are not yet certain, there is little doubt that demand for home-based care will continue to grow, and along with it, the need for home-health-friendly tools and services.

If you have any questions about the benefits of point of care testing in home health settings, please reach out to us. We are happy to help in any way we can. Start by visiting ptsdiagnostics.com/contact-us.

Sources

1 https://homehealthcarenews.com/2021/06/senators-advocates-tout-once-in-a-generation-opportunity-for-funding-hcbs/

2 https://homehealthcarenews.com/2021/01/top-home-health-trends-for-2021/

3 https://hbr.org/2019/10/5-obstacles-to-home-based-health-care-and-how-to-overcome-them

4 https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/heart-disease-lower-cholesterol-risk#1-3

5 https://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/content/16/4/217 

6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11892-018-0989-1

7 https://edume.com/blog/role-of-feedback-in-improving-learning

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Why You Need Both A1C and Glucose Tests for Diabetes

If you have diabetes, your doctor has likely asked you to measure your blood sugar level several times a day and to have your A1C tested 2 to 4 times per year. Have you ever wondered why you need both?

It may seem that providing months-worth of daily blood glucose logs would provide more than enough information for your doctor to evaluate your treatment plan. But in fact, daily blood glucose measurements only tell part of the story. To get the full story, you also need an A1C test, which measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 2-3 months.

The Difference Between Blood Glucose and A1C

To help make sense of it all, let’s think of your blood glucose and A1C goals in terms of saving money. Say you have a goal of saving $10,000 for an emergency fund. To help you reach your goal, you decide to keep a daily log of each time you spend. In 3 months, as you look back over your logs you notice that when you go to your favorite department store, you tend to spend about $50 more than you would like. To stay on track with your savings goal, you adjust your behavior. Maybe you decide to stop going to that department store, or to make a list before you shop to reduce impulse purchases.

That’s the type of benefit you and your healthcare providers get from daily blood glucose measurements. It can show you how well-controlled your blood sugar was on a particular day, at a particular time during that day.

Now, let’s say you want to see how close you are to your financial savings goal overall. For that, you’ll need to take a look at your bank account to see how well those day-to-day behavioral adjustments have been paying off over time. Has consistently avoiding your favorite department store allowed you to save up as much money as you’d hoped? If not, what additional adjustments could you make in your day-to-day decisions to get you closer to that goal?

That’s the type of benefit you and your healthcare providers get from A1C test results. Since it gives you an average of your blood glucose levels over the last 2-3 months and takes into account those level fluctuations across every hour of the day, you get a clearer picture of the impact of your overall diabetes management strategies.

A1C Has the Power to Predict

In a nutshell, blood glucose monitoring is great for giving you feedback on how your daily choices—foods, activities, etc.—are affecting your diabetes management in the short term. A1C tells you what kind of impact those choices are having on your diabetes management overall. And, understanding that overall impact helps you and your doctor evaluate your risk for developing complications from diabetes. For example:

  • An ongoing diabetes study in the UK has found for each 1% decrease in a person’s A1C, there’s a 35% decrease in the risk of developing eye disease and kidney disease.1

A1C at Home

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, A1C tests were often conducted in doctor’s offices or stand-alone laboratories. But just as people have begun to adapt by attending virtual appointments from the comfort and safety of their homes, they have also begun to conduct their own blood tests at home. This has led to a boom in new at-home tests3, for everything from A1C to food sensitivities. Fortunately, for patients with diabetes, this means that they don’t have to miss out on the benefits of regular A1C testing, even when they can’t get blood work done in person.

Before you purchase an at-home A1C test, speak with your doctor to determine which FDA-cleared A1C test is best for you.

Sources

1 https://www.medscape.com/answers/117853-6490/what-are-the-implications-of-the-findings-of-the-united-kingdom-prospective-diabetes-study-ukpds-for-management-of-type-2-diabetes-mellitus-dm

2 https://www.endocrinologyadvisor.com/home/topics/diabetes/type-2-diabetes/hemoglobin-a1c-can-predict-cardiovascular-outcomes-in-high-risk-patients-with-diabetes/

3 https://medicalfuturist.com/the-rise-of-at-home-lab-tests/

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No More Telemedicine Tradeoffs: Get A1C Test Results for Virtual Appointments

For many people with diabetes, regular, personal interaction with healthcare providers is key to helping them successfully manage their disease. The opportunity to ask questions, share concerns, and receive support and encouragement from their providers is highly valued by many patients, and can have a real impact on their health outcomes. 1

But what happens when a global pandemic forces most face-to-face appointments to go virtual? And what happens to the quality of virtual appointments in cases where providers need lab quality results to confidently assess a patient’s condition?

Integrating self-testing options with a telemedicine program may be just the thing patients and providers need to enjoy the flexibility of telemedicine without sacrificing the quality of care.

Bridging the Telemedicine Lab Test Gap

Although virtual appointments have increased by 35% since COVID-19 took hold, there are many patients and providers who are reluctant to try virtual appointments due in part to a perceived decrease in the quality of care when it is conducted virtually.2

One reason for that perception is that the kinds of lab tests healthcare providers would typically use to assess the efficacy of their patient’s treatment cannot be performed virtually.2 Since the recent switch to virtual appointments was so sudden, many telemedicine programs have not yet caught up to the world of at-home, self-collection blood tests available on the market today, forcing providers and patients to do without the information they usually rely on to provide the highest quality care.

Patients and providers don’t have to miss out on the valuable insights lab tests can provide when they switch to virtual appointments. For example, people with diabetes can perform A1C tests at home with the A1CNow® Self Check test system. It is easy to use and has been shown to produce results that are as accurate as those from traditional laboratories.3 That means that both patients and providers can trust that they are receiving the same quality results they would likely receive from an office-run or lab-run test.

Personalizing Diabetes Management Through Self-Tests

Even before COVID-19, many patients with chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension struggled to keep up with the number of appointments they needed to attend for help in managing their condition. Bringing the ability to perform simple lab tests and attend appointments from their homes may be a game changer for those who haven’t had full access to care due to time or money constraints. Though many will benefit for the flexibility of telemedicine and at-home testing, patients should ask their healthcare providers whether self-testing and virtual appointments are appropriate options for them based on their own health risks and goals. And, it’s important not to make any decisions about your health based on the results of an at-home test without first consulting a physician. More information on the A1CNow Self Check system is available at https://prod.ptsdiagnostics.com/a1cnow-self-check/.

References

1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4545295/

2 https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/preventive-care-dropped-during-covid-19-pandemic-despite-rise-telehealth-visits-study

3 https://prod.ptsdiagnostics.com/2019/07/09/a1cnow-system-abstract-multi-center-accuracy-assessment/