Interactive Dashboards Reduce Disparities, Improve Care for Diabetes Patients

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Interactive Dashboards Reduce Disparities, Improve Care for Diabetes Patients

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Key Takeaways

Interactive dashboards used by the Division of Endocrinology provide real-time monitoring and segmented patient data, enabling clinicians to design targeted interventions and improve diabetes care.
The dashboards highlighted a 20% gap in the use of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) between publicly and privately insured patients. The endocrinology team has now closed this gap with over 95% of all patients with T1D using CGM.
The endocrinology team continues to refine the dashboards, track emerging factors and make ongoing care enhancements.

Real-time Visualization Tools Monitor Diabetes Care

Cincinnati Children's is modernizing pediatric diabetes care with innovative real-time dashboards and data visualization tools. These advancements enable clinicians to monitor and manage diabetes more effectively across diverse patient populations, ensuring personalized and timely interventions for better health outcomes.

Built in collaboration with the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence and Cincinnati Children’s data analysts, the dashboards represent a major shift in how we deliver and monitor diabetes care.

"Developing an actionable, clinically relevant dashboard has been a longstanding goal,” says Sarah Corathers, MD, clinical director of the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology. “While it requires significant investment, it's accelerating our ability to positively impact patient care delivery and outcomes."

Early Win: Closing a Technology Access Gap

Assessments powered by these new tools enabled Cincinnati Children’s to nearly close the gap in access to diabetes technology among certain patient populations.

The dashboards highlighted a significant disparity in continuous glucose monitor (CGM) use between publicly and privately insured patients.

"Over the past couple of years, across the entire population, access to CGM is greater than 95%, Corathers says. "We've completely closed a gap of about a 20% difference between our public and privately insured individuals."

Automated insulin delivery systems (a combination of CGM and insulin pump) have dramatically improved glycemic outcomes across all patient groups, reducing disparities between publicly and privately insured patients.

Developing an actionable, clinically relevant dashboard has been a longstanding goal. While it requires significant investment, it's accelerating our ability to positively impact patient care delivery and outcomes.

Sarah Corathers, MD

Facilitating Actionable Change

Data segmentation and analysis are key features of the dashboard. Originally designed to streamline the division’s responses to the U.S. News & World Report survey, the project facilitates actionable change by providing access to detailed patient information. This, in turn, helps guide decision making.

The endocrinology team also developed a second data visualization tool through a ConnecT1D innovation grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. By offering a comprehensive view of the entire patient population, these tools advance analysis and intervention planning, says Amanda Howell, MPH, the data analyst who helped design and build them. The dashboards:

Provide a functional and efficient reporting structure for 128 visualizations, 19 measures, and more than 28,000 data points spanning 2,491 patients over 5 years
Are HIPAA compliant and accessible to relevant end users through shareable links, subscription and Microsoft Teams

“All of those data points are building core measures where we can zoom in, apply different lenses and acquire insights,” Howell says. “We employed statistical process controls that harness analytical power across the center population and various subgroups like race or insurance.”

The interactive dashboards let the endocrinology team track performance in real time throughout the year, letting care teams “maintain a relevant, continuous feedback loop and refine insights and interventions to improve patient outcomes,” Howell says.

Engaging in this work means the team is not surprised by responses on external benchmarking surveys, Corathers says, “because they're items that we've been actively monitoring, intervening in and, if necessary, mitigating throughout the entire course of the year.”

The dashboard’s straightforward visualization lets clinicians easily and quickly assess performances on any specific measure, including:

Duration of diabetes diagnosis
Ethnicity
Insurance type
Language other than English
Race
Social determinants of health

"We can filter based on age, diabetes type or other demographic features," Corathers says. "Then we can get an actionable patient list, which we can use to design care interventions."

Ongoing Refinement

In the future, the endocrinology team will continue to refine and expand the dashboards. The goal is to make them as efficient and reliable as possible so that clinicians can focus on other important areas of their work.

For example, as new factors emerge, the tools can track them and provide additional transparency. This will allow for data analysis and quick identification of areas that need attention—providing opportunities to create improved or new interventions.

(Published April 2025)

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