Self monitoring of blood glucose: the cost to patients

doi:10.1136/bmj.a245

BMJ 2008;336:1263 (7 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a245

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Screening for type 2 diabetes

Self monitoring of blood glucose: the cost to patients

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Simon et al found that glucose self monitoring by patients withnon-insulin treated type 2 diabetes increased NHS costs withoutbenefiting glycaemic control.¹ Less intensive and more intensiveself monitoring cost ${lira}$ 92 ( ${euro}$ 117; $182) and ${lira}$ 84 more than usual care.

Financial cost is just one factor to consider when weighingthe benefits and costs of interventions. Patients who self monitoredwere more anxious and depressed than controls. Another costis the time it takes to self monitor three times daily for twodays a week² when each self monitoring episode takes aroundthree minutes.³

Self monitoring at the prescribed frequency would take 15.6hours annually. For working age adults, the wage rate representsthe gain from working an hour and the opportunity cost of anhour spent on unpaid activities, and it can be used to translatetime costs into monetary terms.⁴ Using the 2005-6 adult minimumwage (about ${lira}$ . . . [Full text of this article]

Monika M Safford, associate professor of medicine¹, Louise B Russell, research professor²

¹ University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-4410, USA, ² Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA

msafford@uab.edu

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Cost effectiveness of self monitoring of blood glucose in patients with non-insulin treated type 2 diabetes: economic evaluation of data from the DiGEM trial: Judit Simon, Alastair Gray, Philip Clarke, Alisha Wade, Andrew Neil, Andrew Farmer on behalf of the Diabetes Glycaemic Education and Monitoring Trial Group
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