Compliance with the 2015 American Diabetes Association Screening Guidelines for Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 in Primary Care

Purpose: The purpose of this project was to evaluate provider use of hemoglobin (HgA1c) measurement as a method of screening for Type Two Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) per the 2015 American Diabetes Association screening guidelines in a multidisciplinary primary care clinic in Kentucky. Methods: A retrospective electronic medical record review was conducted in a large ambulatory care clinic. A master list was compiled of all patients aged 45-89 years who were seen for any reason the first week of November 2015. A total of 127 records that met inclusion criteria were randomly selected. The proportion of patients who were appropriately screened in the past three years with HgA1c measurement was calculated. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: Approximately 60% of all of the patients who met both the age and BMI screening criteria were screened in the past three years using HgA1c. Of those patients who were screened, 3.9% met criteria for the diagnosis of diabetes, and approximately 40% met criteria for the diagnosis of pre-diabetes based on the HgA1c results. Conclusions: Using only the HgA1c as a method of screening, providers in this clinic appropriately screened 60% of all patients who met the criteria of BMI and age which exceeds the projected compliance rate in the literature