Cardiometabolic Care Links

This groundbreaking initiative emphasizes core competencies, best practices and shared responsibility among all stakeholders in the member/patient's healthcare ecosystem. We investigate cardiometabolic disorders and how they interrelate to significantly increase cardiovascular risk. We provide the tools and information that primary care physicians, specialists, midlevels, nurses, pharmacists, managed care professionals and the pharmaceutical industry need to work together to address this growing problem and ultimately improve patient outcomes.

In essence, cardiometabolic disorders manifest through interrelated health issues in an individual-primarily hypertension, elevated fasting glucose, reduced high-density lipoprotein, abdominal obesity and elevated trigylcerides-which promote the development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and type 2 diabetes. Persons with cardiometabolic disorders also have a propensity for inflammation and thrombosis. While guidelines differ in their specificity, they agree that a combination of metabolic and underlying risk factors comprise the disorders.

Managed care's role includes disease management and integration of programs and data to better assist members in self-care. Working with physicians, managed care's opportunity is to collaborate in an effort to avoid costly complications.

"Metabolic syndrome is not a disease," says Gordon Norman, MD, executive vice president of science and innovation for Alere LLC, based in Marietta, Ga., which provides health support solutions. "It is a cluster of factors without one pathophysiological mechanism but linked together and contributing to morbidity."