Our panel of Glytec experts share their key takeaways, session highlights, and answer your questions.
TRANSCRIPT
Robby Booth: All right. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us yesterday and today for our third annual Time to Target conference. My name is Robby Booth. I'm the founder and chief strategy officer here at Glytec. And as you know, the theme of this year's conference has been the glycemic management journey.
We've been doing this event for a few years now, and I'm always blown away by not just our speakers, but the energy from our community of users. And, you know, we've had so many attendees coming in this year and it's just been really special to see the interest and all the participation this year especially, so thank you.
I am joined here by some of my Glytec team members and I know they're looking forward to sharing their key takeaways from the sessions. Then we're gonna be answering some of your questions live. We do want this to be an interactive session. So feel free to throw your thoughts or questions into the chat.
You should have a Q&A tab on the right side of your screen. And then any questions that we're not able to get to today, we will make sure that one of our teammates follows up with you after the event. So with that, let's jump in and, you know, meet some of the team and hear what they thought about the sessions today.
I'm going to start with Dave Cooper, and we'll just let everybody do a quick introduction.
Dave Cooper: Thanks, Robby. Hi, everyone. I'm Dave Cooper. I'm the Vice President of Customer Success. I'm a registered nurse. I've been with Glytec for almost eight years, and prior to joining Glytec, I was an ICU nurse for about ten years, and I used Glucommander for many of those years.
So really excited about the content that we were able to watch today and yesterday. Just to share a few of my reflections from some of the sessions. First, the data detective session, I thought that was great. It made me laugh not at you, Robby, but laughing with you. A whimsical way of presenting some important information about how important it is, how important the data is, and the data literacy component is for hospitals to really understand the data and to drive the change that they want.
Then the second session I'll reflect on is the one about clinical inertia with Dr. Drincic and Hannah Day. Just a great session. Lots of information about how clinical inertia continues to persist in the inpatient world, as well as the outpatient world. And I really liked how Dr. Drincic walked through different ways to combat clinical inertia.
One thing that really stuck out to me was how she highlighted the iterative nature of trying to overcome it. I think in one of the examples she talked about with order sets was how many different versions of the order sets they had to come up with, but they continued to press forward. They continue to make it a little better every time until they get the outcomes and the results that they wanted.
And then finally the session just prior to this with, Dr. Talari and Dr. Messler on the importance of the data. I mean, today was focusing on the how of glycemic management and no better way to end the conference than to look at how you can be successful from a data standpoint and the importance of not just having that data and having that measurement, which is really critical, really important, but then communicating that out, making sure that everybody sees the data and understands the data and how that can really help motivate change. So great content. I really enjoyed those sessions.
Robby Booth: All right, great. Thanks, Dave. Uh, Tiffany?
Tiffany Young: I am also a registered nurse. I am a certified diabetes care and education specialist. I have been with Glytec for about a year and a half now. I started out as a clinical project lead and, and I'm currently transitioning to be on Dave's team, to be the clinical customer success manager.
So I've worked both with the clients during and after implementation of Glucommander. And prior to joining Glytec, I was a diabetes program manager as well as an end user of Glucommander at Northeast Georgia Medical Center. Some of the things I wanted to highlight around, what I thought was great about this conference, was I'm always starstruck by Dr.Umpierrez and how he speaks, and how intellectual, his discussions are.
And his talk on inpatient glycemic management pearls did not disappoint. It was great to hear also the mention of two Glucommander studies, including GLUCO-CABG, which, as you know, was one of the most important inpatient studies conducted in the last 20 years.
Plus, the CGM study at Grady. So, of course, calling it the first of its kind. And I cannot wait to see CGM in the hospital and knowing that this could possibly be our future. So I'm really excited for all of that. As well as knowing that basal bolus insulin is the standard.
It's better than sliding scale alone in that non ICU setting, which we all know, but hearing it from Dr. Umpierrez really drives that home. And then lastly, knowing that he's going to have a study, hopefully next year, released about the use of oral agents in the hospital. Definitely learning something new every day, especially with the development of all these new oral agents that are coming to market.
Secondly, highlighting Hannah Day's presentation for optimizing DKA. It's always great to get a refresh on DKA and how to optimize those DKA protocols. We know DKA is very complex and complicated and Hannah really gave us a master class on DKA as well as, you know, the treatment of DKA. Hannah's STEP approach that she shared and the development of the protocol was really nice and, and hopefully helps other organizations develop or optimize their current protocol.
It's also nice to see that the importance of the protocol and how it can utilize to not only help standardize the titration of IV insulin, but also standardize treatment timeliness. Your transfers like your ED to ICU or the inpatient setting, those potassium replacements, fluid replacements, and even transition, which we all know is complex in itself as well.
And again, she referenced a study with Glucommander versus paper protocols and the effectiveness of that for our patients with DKA. Um, and it's really exciting that Hannah was also able to share some of those unpublished updates around DKA treatment and resolution. Again, they haven't been updated, the protocol, or the standards haven't been updated since 2009, so it's really great that we're getting some updates to that, and we're really eager to get those updates out to our partners so we can plan accordingly for our new partners as well.
And lastly, Trish and Jordan with Trish’s personal experience. We're so lucky to have a partner like Trish from AnMed. I loved her personal perspective, giving her own journey with diabetes and why glycemic management matters. You can really see Trish’s passion for people with diabetes and the obligation to provide the very best care possible.
Understanding that diabetes is not cookie cutter, that each patient deserves to have individualized care. Also love how she mentioned AnMed did not have a DKA protocol, just like Hannah discussed in her presentation, and Glucommander helped them leverage in developing that protocol. And my favorite quote from this entire conference was her final line.
Go for Glucommander.
Robby Booth: I like that. Yeah, thanks. There's always so much going on, especially as you mentioned with some of the new guidelines coming on DKA, so. It's exciting to keep up with all of that. All right, Andrew, last but not least.
Andrew Schwier: Thanks, Robbyi. I also am a nurse. I've been a nurse for 26 years.
19 of that was spent in the critical care environment where I was a bedside nurse, ICU supervisor, and then a nurse manager of an ICU. I was also an end user of Glucommander IV, so I've been in a lot of y'all's shoes. I've spent the last seven years with Glytec. I recently transitioned to the customer, the clinical customer success manager role where mine and Tiffany's jobs is to help our partners be successful with Glucommander and with glycemic management, and we're very passionate about that.
These past two days have been great, and a few sessions stood out to me, the myth busters, and two of the myths really resonated with me. One is, carb counting is more work than it is worth, and you know, that's completely false.
Carb counting allows us to give the correct insulin dose to our patient. It helps us prevent hypoglycemia, and it also helps us... Prevent hyperglycemia, but carb counting can be intimidating. It doesn't have to be. We have great resources here at Glytec, and there's lots of things that you can do in your facilities to make carb counting much easier for your nurses.
We can get carb amounts placed on the meal tickets. We can get carb amounts placed on menus, carb amounts for those snack nutritional items. Laminate those, tape them on to the refrigerator, and then... let's give our nurses the tools that they need for when patients bring food in from the outside.
Let's give them an online resource. There's a lot of great online resources that you can allow your nurses to use that will give them the information that they need at their fingertips. And then the other myth that really resonated with me is my patient is only in the hospital a few days. And glycemic management is only important for patients with type 1 or in the event of extreme fluctuations.
I spoke about, I had the opportunity to talk about this a couple weeks ago. And that's, that's just not true. We all know and we appreciate that hypoglycemia is really bad for our patients. And I think we really underappreciate hyperglycemia, and persistent hyperglycemia, and those can have negative consequences as well.
You know, when patients come into the hospital, it was stated during that session that they're at their most vulnerable state. They're sick, and so glycemic management is really the most important thing, and if we don't manage their blood glucose as well. What sort of message are we giving our patients for when they're discharged home?
You know, if it's not important when you're in the hospital, how can we let them know that it's important when you're out of the hospital? So, glycemic management, really important, and I think the data and the literature is really starting to support that, and so is CMS. Other sessions that I really enjoyed, the glycemic management journey case studies, Aimee Fahey and Peter from SUNY, and then Angela Hodges, from Advent out in Texas.
They all had... Very different stories, but they all use data to drive change, and they shared that data to help drive success and get buy-in. And it's a journey. I think that was, that's the theme of this year, and Angela put it well. The journey is never finished. Glycemic management is complex, and it can be hard, and that's where the glycemic management committees come in.
You need a team. You can't do this yourself. You need to celebrate your wins. Even the small wins, because this glycemic management committee, you're affecting about 40 percent of your patient population when you have successes, and you need to celebrate that. So that's my takeaways, Robby.
Robby Booth: Nope, I love that. It's teamwork. So, just a couple of things I'll mention. The, and I know I already said this before in an earlier session, but it probably bears repeating... one of my favorite sessions was Dr. Maynard with, you know, going through some of the CMS measures and what's going on. He always speaks so eloquently about this and I always love listening.
I think it's valuable, it's timely, and it's just so important for folks to understand not only, you know, what's going on right now. But what, you know, what the thinking is and where this is headed so that everybody can prepare, because you said, you know, sometimes these things do take time to kind of, uh, get rolled out.
Dr. Messer and I moderated a session yesterday recognizing some of our customers with awards, and we had a lot of fun with that one. We have a lot of really special and, as I said earlier, passionate, users and community users, and it was hard to narrow it down. To pick just a couple to highlight, but we were really honored to do that.
And then today we had the Customer Success Spotlight that I moderated, and we had some really amazing stories from the front lines. So it was good to hear those, and, you know, one that I would mention, just is the Kaweah Delta story. You know, great success, a rural hospital, higher than average prevalence of diabetes.
And she pointed out the 2 million in savings through hypoglycemia reduction, right? That's, really significant. And not just from a financial perspective, but, you know, especially as she said, when you think about what that impact has on the patients that they care for, I think is really, an amazing and special story.
So with that, I think we're going to go over to Q&A. And, before we do, just a quick reminder to everyone out there, if you missed any of our sessions today, everything is being recorded. It'll be available in your attendee hub and you can watch it on demand. through the end of the year. We do have a lot of great questions.
We also have some questions that we got throughout the day that we didn't get to during some of the live sessions. So we'll be happy to answer those here, and please feel free to continue to enter any questions that you have in the Q&A tab. It also has a feature you can upvote if there's questions that you want to make sure get answered, and as I said, we'll of course follow up with you if we're not able to get to that question.
So, the first question, and Tiffany, we'll just start with you, and this was a question that came in. During your session on the Glycemic Management Committee and, this question is from Stacey. How did you get team members engaged in light of many competing priorities and concern for bandwidth?
Tiffany Young: Thanks, Robby, and thank you for tuning into that session, and I'm glad we could get to your question, Stacey. We were able to really engage the providers mainly, we, of course, nurses, we're always on shift, even nurse leaders are on the shift during the week, so we're able to get, catch them a little bit easier than providers who have those rotating schedules, so providers were our main point of contact with getting that competing priorities with, and we realized that we needed to get the providers that worked on that same week.
Because if they worked on opposite weeks, it was really hard to ask somebody on their week off after they just worked seven days straight to come and attend a meeting. So we tried to ensure that they were all on the same week. And of course we wanted to make sure that they had a passion for diabetes, but, that they worked in that same team.
During Covid, we of course saw, increase in their workload and of course the concern with bandwidth. So we backed off on the meeting. Cadence during that time and cancel meetings during those, those first few months, especially, and then re-engage down the road. We did utilize email when we needed some quick votes for changes, that we of course couldn't meet during that strenuous time period.
But since we were a multi-facility system, we also made sure that the meetings were virtual. So that the others that were on different campuses, they didn't necessarily have to come to the main campus.
And I also think allowing the providers and the nurses to bring feedback, it allowed them to have a voice and it made them feel important and made them feel like what they were bringing was being heard. And so that they, they didn't have that concern for priority knowing that their colleagues and cohorts thought that that was a priority to them.
So, that's how we were able to manage that.
Robby Booth: Okay, great. Thanks. Uh, Andrew, you mentioned carb counting. We have a question here that came in. So we'll throw it to you. And the question is, with carb counting, do you recommend using the glycemic index?
Andrew Schwier: Okay. All right. Thanks, Robby. I would say no.
As I mentioned, carb counting can be intimidating for our nurses. We want to educate them and give them the resources that they need, but we don't need to add another layer of complexity to this. Let's keep it as simple as possible. Let's look at the amount of carbs that they have consumed and let's dose their mealtime insulin off of the amount of carbs that they've consumed or the amount of carbs that they are going to consume.
Robby Booth: Okay, great. And then, Dave, we'll throw it to you on this, on this question from Brian. Given that sometimes change can be scary, how did you best equip your teams for success?
Dave Cooper: I think one of the ways that I've seen that accomplished is when you have your interdisciplinary teams that are aligned on the need.
So, I would say developing your why statement. I talked a little bit about that in a customer-only session that we have some tools that can help with that as well. And not just building out that why statement, but then communicating that out and getting that buy-in from all the different disciplines because we know glycemic management is, is beyond one particular department.
So you've got to have that buy-in from all departments so that everyone's aligned and marching towards the same goals.
Robby Booth: Alright, thanks. And then I will, I'll take this question. This is one that is near and dear to my heart. Are there particular metrics in analytics that should be monitored for submission to CMS?
Other process and outcome measures. Is there a list of recommended analytics? And that is a common question that we get. We, you know, routinely talk about, you know, cover a pretty broad range of metrics or key performance indicators with glucometrics and yes, you know, the top line indicators are going to align with CMS, you're going to want to look at your severe hypo, severe hyper, but as the question indicated, you know, process related measures, we find a lot of value in looking at those process related measures, things like what percentage of patients are receiving their scheduled basal dose, you know, how timely are the pre-meal glucose checks, and I know we had a session I think last year about the meal triad.
You know, we look at our doses being modified by a provider, we like to look at those and look at provider ordering trends and make sure that, you know, the modifications are in the range that you would, you would like to see in a typical scenario. So there's a bunch of those, you know, I'd call them process related KPIs that you can dive into, but it really depends on what part of the process you're trying to optimize.
And this is an area where we've done a significant amount of work, and we have hundreds of slides. So happy to get on a Zoom, you know, and walk you through that if anybody wants, you know, more detail. But that's a really great question. We are getting a few questions about if the presentations are going to be available and, yes, our team is working on making those presentations available to the attendees and we'll be sure to reach out via email when those slide decks are available.
And, you know, of course, all of the sessions are available on demand. Let me just see if we have any other questions coming in. It looks like we're probably reaching the end of our time allotted. So we will just go ahead and wrap it up. I'll ask everybody, you know, just really briefly, if you think about your own glycemic management journey, that's the theme this year of our, of our T3 conference. What is one piece of advice or an action item that you would give to our attendees? Why don't we go to Dave first?
Dave Cooper: Sure. I think I would tell everyone to keep at it. It's an iterative process. It's worth the effort. That's a theme that, you know, I know has been touched on throughout the conference that this really is a journey.
It's not something that you're going to accomplish overnight, but with the right structures and strategy you can make progress. So continue on in the journey.
Robby Booth: Okay, that's a good one. Uh, Tiffany?
Tiffany Young: And to kind of piggyback off that, but also go back to my glycemic management committee discussion. I'm very passionate about glycemic management committees, and I would, again, just say get started.
Start with those small wins. Look for that data that you can make a difference in and make the, look at it, develop a plan, develop a process. Implement it and, you know, measure those outcomes because sometimes the littlest things make the biggest difference.
Robby Booth: Okay, great. And Andrew?
Andrew Schwier: Mine would be share the why.
Why is glycemic management important and that answer might be different to the different people that we talk to. It might be different for the C suite than it is for the nurses. So share the why. Why are you doing this? Why does glycemic management, why is it important? And why are you bringing on Glucommander?
You need to share that why. You need to be able to get folks to buy in to your mission.
Robby Booth: Yeah, that's a great point. And we, you know, we've seen it with a lot of our customers. I mean, you know, everybody wants to provide the best care possible. And we always, it's interesting to hear the motivating driving force behind some of our different customers’ decisions to roll it out.
Okay, well, great. Well, it's sad to say that's all the time we have here today. But before we officially close out 2023 Time to Target, I'll note that, you know, Andrew, you brought up the highlights of the glycemic management committee's session that Tiffany, you were a part of. And one of the common themes that we heard over the last two days is the importance of approaching the glycemic management journey as a team, having the different roles and perspectives coming together because it's an issue that impacts patients everywhere in the hospital.
So that team approach is really important and we are so happy and grateful and fortunate to see so many of those different roles and teams represented here with our Time to Target attendees. So we of course want to thank everyone for taking the time out of your busy schedules to join us this year.
And thanks to our amazing speakers. And of course, thanks to our team at Glytec. It takes a lot of work to pull off these live events. And we have an amazing team at Glytec that works behind the scenes. to make all the magic happen. They've also compiled some great resources for you, and at the end of this session, there'll be a QR code that you can scan to access webinars and case studies and guides and all sorts of resources.
If you do have any other questions or if you want to learn more about Glytec's eGMS, you can reach out to us at TimetoTarget@Glytecsystems.com and we'd love to hear from you. On behalf of myself, Dave, Tiffany, Andrew, and the entire team at Glytec, thank you for choosing to spend a couple of days with us for Time to Target, and thank you for your continued commitment to glycemic management excellence.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at Time to Target 2024. Thank you and have a great night everybody.
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