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Program coordinating diabetes, cardio and depression treatment is touted

 

A nationwide initiative called COMPASS (Care of Mental, Physical and Substance-use Syndromes) is being touted for successfully coordinating patients’ diabetes and cardiovascular treatment with mental-health care to both reduce depression and improve patients’ glucose and blood-pressure numbers.

Patients  in the initiative talked at least once a month with  care managers, who worked with the patients and primary-care physicians to address  patients’ depression and medication for diabetes, hypertension or both.

Forty percent of patients with uncontrolled disease at enrollment achieved depression remission or response; 23 percent achieved glucose control, and 58 percent achieved blood-pressure control during an 11th-month followup.

Care managers had either behavioral health or  regular medical training.

The Center for Medicare and Medication Innovation funded the $18-million, three-year initiative.


“This was a successful wide-scale implementation of a collaborative care model that demonstrated it can be used in a variety of health care settings with positive effects for providers and patients,” Karen J. Coleman, Ph.D.,  of Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation, said.

She added said that the study indicates that patients with mild and moderate depression can be cared for in a primary-care setting.

“Depression is a chronic disease like diabetes,” she  said. “Healthy behavioral changes like sleep, exercise, and better eating can improve diabetes and depression.

To read an article on this program, please hit this link.


Study: Palliative-care information, emotional-support sessions with kin of critically ill don’t help

hospice

This may surprise many people. An article in JAMA looks at the effect of informational and emotional-support meetings between palliative-care specialists and  families of critically ill patients.

The authors concluded:

“Among families of patients with chronic critical illness, the use of palliative care-led informational and emotional support meetings compared with usual care did not reduce anxiety or depression symptoms and may have increased post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. These findings do not support routine or mandatory palliative care-led discussion of goals of care for all families of patients with chronic critical illness.”

To read the JAMA article, please hit this link.


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