A study published in Endocrine Practice has found that Project ECHO Diabetes, a virtual education program for primary care providers, significantly improves blood sugar control in patients with diabetes, resulting in significant healthcare cost savings.

Project ECHO Diabetes provided bi-monthly tele-education, real-time medical support, and access to diabetes resources across Federally Qualified Health Centers in California and Florida. The program ran between 2021 and 2022.

Among nearly 33,000 adult participants, including over 1,100 with type 1 diabetes and more than 31,000 with type 2 diabetes, the intervention successfully reduced the proportion of patients with dangerously high HbA1c levels (>9%). For type 1 diabetes, the percentage dropped from 31.7% to 26.7%, while in type 2 diabetes, it declined from 24.0% to 18.9% following six months of support.

These improvements translated into an estimated first-year savings of over $3,200 per patient, totaling more than $5 million, exceeding the program’s implementation cost of just over $500,000.