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Category: Diabetes Industry

ROI of Social Good in the Diabetes Industry

Chris Stocker

diabetesbluecircleThe other night during DSMA, there was a question posed that had to do with social good and the big players in the diabetes industry understanding the positives of social good.  I mentioned to Bennet  that the shift has began for companies to see the ROI of social good.  But what is the ROI?

This is something that I have written about before in a couple of my other blogs that I write, but I thought it was a good fit to write about here.

The ROI of social media in general has always been difficult to calculate, especially when it’s not defined at the very beginning what the goal is. Typically, the C-Suiters need to see numbers like this. I spent $10, we made $20 from that $10, that means we made a profit.  How can you tell exactly how much money you made by somebody building trust and a relationship with your company?  Trust me, I own a business, it’s difficult to see that connection.  However, a lot of businesses are able to see that connection, at least are starting to. Read More

Endo Appointment, Bad A1C, and Apidra Costs Too Much

Chris Stocker

I just got home from my endo appointment about 20 minutes ago, and I wanted to write this blog post while everything was still fresh in my mind.  First, let me mention what some of my thoughts were going into this appointment.  I knew my A1C was going to be high, actually, probably the highest it’s been since being diagnosed.  Why did I think this?  Because my meter results over the last three months say so.  I also knew that I did not wear my Dexcom at all during the last 60 days, so I knew that was going to be a point of discussion.  Finally, I did not reach my goal for my weight loss.  Now, onto what happened. Read More

Interview with Jerry Stoner – Winning Agency from The Pitch

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Two Sunday’s ago, JDRF was the featured company that two agencies were to create pitches for on the AMC show, “The Pitch”.  The winning ad agency was Bozell.  I was able to have the opportunity to ask Jerry Stoner, their executive creative director, a few questions about the show and the ads they pitched.  For more information about the show, you can check out The Pitch at AMC.

For now, let’s get on with the questions. Read More

Demand for Diabetes Educator Increases – Now What?

Chris Stocker

I recently read this article posted on Endocrine Today, Demand for Diabetes Educators Projected to Increase Sharply.  My first question when I read this is if the demand is going up, then is the supply going to increase as much?  I am not going to give an economics class here because most of you all know this, but when the demand increases, the supply tends to go down.  But the supply for diabetes educators is already low, so, I’m not a genius but this doesn’t sound look a good situation.  I think that we already knew that the demand for diabetes educators is going to increase sharply because the disease itself is increasing, so this article does not really tell me much or help the situation.

One question that was some-what answered in this article that I was interested in is how Medicare and insurance companies would reimburse for these diabetes education classes.  Would they cover only one a year, or 50% of each visit, or not cover any of them at all?  I think that it is important for diabetes education to be covered by insurance because people just don’t have the money to spend on education.  So if they don’t have the money to show up to a physical classroom setting or one-on-one lesson, or even a group diabetes education session, where else are they going to turn to?  Pick me, pick me, I know, I know.  The Diabetes Online Community, the DOC.  I mentioned this briefly in a post the other day also.

I think that it is essential to take diabetes education online.  There may not be live sessions on the internet, but quality recorded videos may be able to provide essential answers to some of the top diabetes questions.  One way to do this may be to submit your questions before hand and the diabetes educator can answer all the questions in one sitting and provide answers to all of the questions.

I know you are asking…. who’s going to pay for this?  Well, the answer is, I don’t know yet.  Who is going to produce the videos, edit them, finalize them, distribute them, what CDE is going to do this, how are we going to collect the e-mail questions?  I don’t know the answers to all of these questions, but I truly feel that the more I ask these questions, the more people are going to step up and answer these questions.

We all have specialties in the DOC, it is about damn time that we start pulling all of our personal resources together and start putting them together and start kicking ass with our skills.

Beginning today, Diabetes Education has now been put on my top todo list.  It was always on there, but it wasn’t as high as it is now.

Who is Certified to Give Diabetes Education?

Chris Stocker 7 Comments

So with the AADE annual conference going on right now, it got me to thinking about diabetes education.  Who is qualified to give diabetes education, who shouldn’t be giving diabetes education, and should people who do not have a certification be able to give diabetes education?  Well, why wait, let’s get into all three of them now.

Who is qualified to give diabetes education?

Currently, if you are a CDE (Certified Diabetes Educator) you are qualified to give diabetes education.  Because you are certified!  What if you aren’t certified, does that mean that you are not qualified to give somebody some education about diabetes?  I do not think so.  I think that there are many things that I can give better education about than even a CDE can.  I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on tv, but I am a diabetic, so I may know a thing or two about diabetes.  I don’t claim to be a diabetes guru, but if somebody comes to me with a simple diabetes question, I feel that I am qualified to give an answer.  There are items, such as diet or very scientific items that I will not give education on.  Maybe some advice, but would definitely refer them to somebody who is more certified.  I have always felt that I learned more from the diabetes community than I do from a CDE.  I look at it as the difference between a class at college or an internship during college.  During a class you learn everything in the book, but you don’t actually learn how to apply or adapt to these items in the real world until you actually do them, like during an internship.

Who shouldn’t be qualified to give diabetes education?

Diabetes Douchebags like Dr. Oz and Wendell Fowler. Enough said, moving on.

People without a “Certification”

I am not going to pretend like I know what are the rules and regulations are for this.  I do not know the legal, financial, medicare, insurance billing, or accountability factors (if somebody does, please comment). To me, it seems that the knowledge is there for a diabetes educator, they just haven’t taken the test.  I once spoke with several CDE’s who were encouraging me to go back to school and become a CDE, but I couldn’t afford it.  They joked and said that I probably knew more than most CDE’s, but I don’t know any “technical” terms and would fail the test miserably.  So this becomes a very tricky question and one with an answer in a gray area.  Do we allow diabetes educators without a certification to give education about insulin and diet without having the backing of an accreditation?  Or is the accreditation just a piece of paper with a few signatures?

Now I’ve gotten to the end of this post and now I confused myself and I’m not sure where I stand anymore.

What are your thoughts?

Express Scripts and Medco Acquisition

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Recently, Express Scripts looked to acquire Medco, which is still pending approval to my knowledge, but who knows.  This is my issue with this.  I have Medco, at least right now.  It seems that every year I have a new mail order pharmacy, and every year I get nervous about how easy or hard it is going to be to get my supplies.  Is there going to be an issue, do they have the strips that I use as a tier 1 or a tier 3.  So, now I haven’t switched insurance companies or supplier, but if this acquisition goes through then I will be using Express Scripts.  Typically mergers or acquisitions of large companies like this, not many things do change, but there will be some executive level decisions that could make some big differences.  For example, Freestyle Lite strips may be considered tier 3 and cost 5 times the amount of a tier 1.

Mergers and acquisitions do not always go easy, I’ve seen some bad ones in the past,but let’s just hope that this one goes fine.  I’ve never used Express Scripts before, so my question is to all of you, how have they been in the past?  Any issues?  Do they favor one specific brand over the other?

I look forward to all of your answers and feedbacks….that’s what the DOC is all about 🙂

Have a great week everybody

One Touch Ultra Strips Ordered

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

I mentioned previously that I was switching to One Touch Ultra test strips instead of using the Freestyle Lite strips.  The reason is that Medco changed the Freestyle Lite to a tier 3 which is $150 for a 90 day supply, as opposed to One Touch Ultra’s which are only $25 for a 90 day supply.  I called the pharmacy today to see what I had to do in order to get the new strips ordered.  It seemed like it would be an easy process.  The customer service rep was very nice and helpful, so thank you for that, because unfortunately there are a lot of bad diabetes companies out there, trust me I worked for one for 3 1/2 years 🙂

There was one small issue, there was a limit of 6 boxes of 100.  Well I test 8-10 times a day, thats 240-300 a month, so that’s about 900 strips for 90 days, the math doesn’t add up.  The customer service rep explained that my doctor can override this, it will just be an additional step.  Well, about 30 minutes later, I had a phone call from the doctor, that they called in the prescription and that they also requested the 900 strips as opposed to the 600 limit.  It is so great to have not only a doctor that cares, but a doctor that lives with type 1 diabetes and uses an insulin pump herself.

Well, just like the other night, the Miami Heat and Mavs game is on, so that is it for tonight’s post.  Plus I just got done with a Twitter #seochat tonight.  If you like search engine optimization, I suggest you tune into this weekly chat on Thursday night.

Booked for Roche Social Summit

Chris Stocker 4 Comments

Unfortunately, I have gone through one of those stages where I haven’t been online at all.  No blog posts, no tweets, no Facebook updates, nothing.  I hate when I go through these time periods, but sometimes it just gets tough to fit all this stuff into the schedule.  I have so much that I want to blog about and talk about, but just wish I had a little more time in the day to do it all, don’t we all though?

Onto other things, I finally got my travel schedule booked for the Roche Summit.  I am excited and can’t wait to meet all of you who are going.  Unfortunately, I have to cut out a little early on Friday because of the time of my flight.  I have never been to San Diego, so I look forward to seeing part of the city.  I’m still pissed at Budget car rental for screwing up my plans last night by not allowing me to rent a car to get to the Roche Social Media Summit.  Guess what Budget, you can’t stop me this year!

Well, this may be one reason why I haven’t had much of a chance to blog or tweet as much.  My dog needs to go to the bathroom and the Heat- Mavs game is on, so it’s off to watch that.

Have a great night everyone!

My Thoughts On Stolen Content

Chris Stocker

I know there has been a lot of talk about stolen content.  Anybody that steals content should be punished by having their site banned by Google and their hosting company taking their website down.  Unfortunately, this happens so often every single day that it is nearly impossible for it to happen.  First, just actually finding the content is difficult, and then taking actions to get the site penalized, is even harder.  Honestly, people steal ideas all the time for blogging.  If you say that you haven’t then you probably just haven’t realized that you do it.  I’ve taken ideas that people blogged about and wrote my own post about it.  But that is the biggest difference, I write my OWN post about it and gave mention to the person who wrote it the first time or came up with the idea.  (For example, this post has been talked about by fellow D-OC’ers, this isn’t my idea to just write about this today)

Let’s look at the good side of this first, and this relies on an if.  IF the person stealing the content has a link back to your site, then they are at least giving you credit where credit is due.  Also, let’s look at the technical side of this stuff and why they are stealing the content.  This becomes a search engine 101 reason.  The more content you have on your site about what you are selling or what your site is about, the higher Google will rank you, bottom line.  Here’s the catch.  Google does not like duplicate content.  If there is the same content on 2 different pages on the internet, Google will only show one of them.  Guess what, if you posted it first and your site has more authority for the post, which it will especially if there is a link back to your site, then Google is not even going to show the stealers website!  So people are not even going to see the content anyway.  And once Google finds this out, they will ban a site, pretty much forever, then its game over.

The bad part is obviously when somebody steals the content and they don’t give you the credit for it.  Scott had a great blog post about things you can do and the proper steps to take in order to get the website down.