For Health Care Providers
For years you’ve been telling your patients to “eat better and start exercising” and for years, it hasn’t worked.
It’s not because your patients don’t want to be healthier! (In fact, they want it more than anything.)
The truth is, changing your lifestyle is challenging. And doing it on your own, without support, is impossible for most people.
Your patients need support. They need a accountability. They need a community that will help them reach their wellness goals so they can be the healthiest, happiest people in your office.
Fundamental Health Solutions is the real deal- no insanely restrictive diets, no dangerously intense workouts, no body shaming. Our Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life. is part of the CDC’s National Diabetes Prevention Program and is PROVEN to help patients prevent or delay Type 2 Diabetes.
Want to learn more? Click here to book your call.
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Fundamental Health Solutions meets your patients where they are and partners with them to help them to create and maintain healthy lifestyles and improve their health through our Get Healthy Initiatives.Â
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More about Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life. and prediabetic patients.
- In the average primary care practice it’s likely one-third of patients over the age of 18, and over half over age 65, have prediabetes. (Holy moly, that’s A LOT of people!)
- Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life. is an in person lifestyle intervention based on research that showed, among people with prediabetes, a 58% reduction in the new cases of diabetes overall and a 71% reduction in new cases for people over the age of 60. (In short, this is EFFECTIVE.)
- Pre Diabetic people have the power to reverse their symptoms. Left untreated, up to one-third of prediabetic people will progress to diabetes within 5 years. (It’s up to US to help stop the diabetes epidemic.)
- This program is successful in part because they require only moderate weight loss to achieve preventive health benefits. Weight loss of 5 to 7 percent of body weight—10 to 14 pounds for a person weighing 200 pounds—led to the results mentioned above. (This is ACHIEVABLE.) (Since we are only talking about my diabetes prevention program the tense should be singular)
- The American Medical Association and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are promoting these diabetes prevention programs because they are one of the most effective ways to help physicians prevent or delay type 2 diabetes in high-risk patients. (This is LEGIT.)
Frequently Asked Questions
Diabetes Prevention Programs that are a part of the National DPP (like Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life.) use lifestyle change interventions that target improving diet, increasing physical activity and achieving moderate weight loss.
The goal for each participant is to lose ≥5% of body weight by:
- Progressively reducing dietary intake of calories and fat through improved food choices
- Gradually increasing moderate physical activity (e.g., brisk walking) to ≥150 minutes per week
- Developing behavioral problem-solving and coping skills
Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life. is a year-long, in-person, structured, group program consisting of:
- An initial six-month phase offering at least 16 sessions over 16–24 weeks
- An emphasis on behavior modification, managing stress and peer support
- A second six-month phase offering at least one session a month
- Facilitation by a trained lifestyle coach
- Use of a CDC-approved curriculum
- Regular opportunities for direct interaction between the lifestyle coach and participants
To be eligible for referral, patients must:
- Be at least 18 years old and
- Be overweight (Body Mass Index (BMI) ≥24; ≥22 if Asian) AND
- Have a blood test result in the prediabetes range within the past year:
- Hemoglobin A1C: 5.7–6.4% or
- Fasting plasma glucose: 100–125 mg/dL or
- Two-hour plasma glucose (after a 75 gm glucose load): 140–199 mg/dL or
- Be previously diagnosed with gestational diabetes and
- Have no previous diagnosis of diabetes
A growing number of private health insurers offer coverage for patient participation in diabetes prevention programs. Several employers include coverage as part of workplace wellness programs. Costs for a full year of program participation are approximately $700. Some program providers offer monthly payment plans and discounts based on ability to pay. The AMA and the CDC continue to advocate for public and private insurance coverage of the diabetes prevention program.
Depending on the type of office visit, practices can use several CPT and ICD codes to bill for prediabetes screening and counseling. A list of commonly used CPT and ICD codes is included in our {health care provider referral guide}.
Under the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is a contract that protects personal health information in accordance with HIPAA guidelines. Some physician practices may want to explore whether a BAA is needed to exchange information with Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life. Check out the AMA’s BAA template {here}.
Want to learn more? Let’s chat.
Funding for this page is provided by the Tennessee Department of Health.
