Addressing Therapeutic Inertia in 2020 and Beyond: A 3-Year Initiative of the American Diabetes Association

• DOI: 10.2337/cd20-0053
• Publication Date: 2020-07-31T14:54:36Z
• Authors: Robert A. Gabbay; Debbie Kendall; Christine Beebe; John Cuddeback; Todd Hobbs; Naeem D. Khan; Sandra Leal; Eden Miller; Lucia M. Novak; Swapnil N. Rajpathak; Paul Scribner; Luigi Meneghini; Kamlesh Khunti
• Keywords: 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Perspectives in Clinical Diabetes; 3. Good health

Research has shown that getting to glycemic targets early on leads to better outcomes in people with type 2 diabetes; yet, there has been no improvement in the attainment of A1C targets in the past decade. One reason is therapeutic inertia: the lack of timely adjustment to the treatment regimen when a person’s therapeutic targets are not met. This article describes the scope and priorities of the American Diabetes Association’s 3-year Overcoming Therapeutic Inertia Initiative. Its planned activities include publishing a systematic review and meta-analysis of approaches to reducing therapeutic inertia, developing a registry of effective strategies, launching clinician awareness and education campaigns, leveraging electronic health record and clinical decision-support tools, influencing payer policies, and potentially executing pragmatic research to test promising interventions.