Fighting Diabetes, Proactively!

A community approach to diabetic care proves to improve the efficiency of diabetic care, indicates the result of a study funded by Novo Nordisk.

To date, 60 team participants from 19 physician practices caring for a total of 1,300 patients have participated in ACP’s “Closing the Gap” module for diabetes, a program that seeks to close the gap between clinical evidence and best practices and the care actually provided in a physician’s office. The practice-based, team-oriented program trains teams – usually an internist, a nurse, and a staff assistant – to improve the quality of care for patients with chronic diseases.

This team-based approach has resulted in statistically significant improvements in many clinical measures such as a nearly 50 percent improvement in the average number of days between patient office visits for diabetes (from 115 days to 58), a 40 percent increase in annual urine albumin testing, a 62 percent increase in annual dilated eye exams (29 percent to 47), and a 100 percent increase in influenza vaccinations (26 percent to 52). Other important improvements were seen in patients’ lipids levels such as lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol.

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