December 10, 2009

Dear Advocacy Committee Members,

On behalf the staff and volunteer members of the Education Recognition Program (ERP) Committee of the American Diabetes Association (Association), we wanted to share exciting changes affecting our recognition programs.

After extended discussions with CMS (Medicare), the Association has succeeded in extending the approval of program recognition from three to four year cycles. This change will not only apply to new applications but will be granted retroactive to January 1, 2009. This change not only allows any program having received Association recognition since last January to be recognized until 2013, but going forward all terms will be for four years. Importantly, this change also results in a 25% reduction in total cost of receiving and administering program recognition.

In addition, CMS has allowed for a change in the procedure that previously prevented programs seeking initial recognition to obtain reimbursement for visits during the three month data acquisition phase. The programs may now (once recognized) bill retroactively for the education services performed during this period of data collection. In addition, the Association’s Education Recognition Program is developing a new and streamlined on-line application, which is necessary to replace the older system. Funding has also been secured to complete the development of the new application system and plans are in place to begin this work early in 2010.

Finally, the Association is in the final stages of discussions with the University of Pittsburgh to implement a licensing agreement that will allow us to provide the Chronicle diabetes management database to our recognized programs at little or no cost. As all education programs are required to track data and outcomes to assure the ongoing quality of the recognized education program, this tool provides a custom diabetes education database to our constituents. As an added benefit, the Chronicle system can interface with the Association's new application system, eliminating the need to manually enter data with future applications.

I want to express my sincere thanks to Paulina Duker, MPH, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, and the entire ERP staff, along with Sue McLaughlin, BS, RD, CDE, CPT and Linda Siminerio, PhD, for making all of these improvements possible. These changes not only maintain the highest quality standards for ERP, but do so at a lower cost, with increased convenience, and improved "customer service" for more than 3,400 diabetes education programs recognized by the American Diabetes Association.

Please join me in thanking and congratulating this team.

Sincerely,

David M. Kendall, MDM. Sue Kirkman, MD

Chief Scientific and Medical Officer Vice President, Clinical Affairs