8 tips for buying a blood-sugar metre

A blood-sugar metre is an essential piece of equipment for diabetics. Here are eight tips to help you wade through the options.

Over time you'll spend more money on test strips than you will on a metre. And not all strips can be used in all metres.

• So if your insurance company gives you a choice of which metres to buy, remember, the price of the strips is more important than the price of the metre.
• Your health plan will probably cover only certain test strips. Be sure the metre's strips are carried by your pharmacy if you plan to buy them there.

• If your insurance covers several types of metres, ask your doctor, your diabetes educator and your pharmacist for suggestions.
• Check the manufacturers' websites, where you'll see explanations of the different features, and sometimes find special offers.
• If your health plan covers only certain test strips, this limits your choice of metres.

A great place to start your search is to check out Diabetes Dialogue, a consumer magazine published by the Canadian Diabetes Association.

If your monitor is old or dirty, if you've coded it improperly or if your test strips have expired or been exposed to heat or dampness, you'll get incorrect readings, which are worse than useless — they're misleading.

• Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions for how and when to clean the machine.
• To make sure you're getting accurate readings from your metre, bring it to your doctor's appointment and use it to check your blood within a minute or two of when your doctor draws blood.

• Some metres require less blood than others and hold more readings than others.
• Some can talk you through the steps of taking and testing your blood.
• With others you can upload results to your computer and even create charts to give you a picture of your glucose control at different times of the day over time.

Work with your doctor or diabetes educator to figure out what features are most important for you.

Since test strips may vary from batch to batch, some metres require you to enter a code (found on the vial of test strips). This calibrates the metre to the batch of test strips.

Other models have a "no coding" feature.

• That's handy because forgetting to "code" a metre is cited as one of the most frequent reasons that blood glucose is recorded inaccurately.

If you don't have insurance that covers test strips, you might be able to lower your cost of strips and lancets by buying bulk. (Health insurance providers won't pay for bulk items, so this applies only if your strips aren't paid for by insurance.)

• Do a quick calculation to see how many test strips you need a month.
• The strips have an expiration date, so you don't want to buy so many that you get stuck with out-of-date test strips.

The shelf life of test strips can be affected by heat and dampness.

The only way to know how various foods or exercise affects your blood sugar is to check your levels often and write down the results.

Most metres include a notebook for this purpose; the pharmacy may also carry logbooks.

• Sit down and examine your notes, looking for patterns.
• Bring your logbook every time you visit your doctor, dietitian and diabetes educator. They can help you make sense of the results.

These eight tips can help you find the right blood-sugar metre for your needs, budget and insurance.