Does Having a Personal Physician Improve Quality of Care in Diabetes?

Purpose: Although having a continuous relationship with a physician is a defining feature of primary care, few studies have evaluated the effect of this on chronic disease management. This aim of this study was to examine whether having a regular physician is associated with improvements in reaching treat-ment goals for patients with diabetes. Methods: Through the use of a diabetes registry, patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus for a min-imum of 6 months cared for in a large, single academic family medicine practice were compared based on whether they had a regular physician or not. The 2 groups were compared in the frequency in which they achieved goals for management of glycated hemoglobin, blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and other aspects of diabetes care. Results: Patients with a regular provider were slightly older than those without a provider (57.5 years vs. 50.9 years; P .002), but the gender distribution and percent who were smokers was the same. In assessing diabetes quality measures, patients with a regular provider had lower average levels of glycated hemoglobin (7.70 vs 8.53; P .01), but no difference was noted in the percentage achieving a goal of<7.0. No differences were noted between the groups in either the average systolic or diastolic blood pressures or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or in the percentages of patients achieving rec