Formalized Diabetes Education in a Safety-Net Clinic

Uncontrolled diabetes mellitus in a Hispanic population can be helped through a quality improvement project focused on progressive verbal and written diabetes self-management education (DSME) Purpose of this article is to review the background, an organizational assessment, a literature review, results of the quality improvement project that took place at a safety-net clinic in the Midwest. This project included four patients and data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. Results include improved hemoglobin (Hg) A1c, minimal workflow adjustments for providers, completed microalbumins, and written education given to patients. In conclusion, the quality improvement project showed positive trends in outcome measures over a short period of time. Larger sample size needed over a longer period to assess true impact. Implications from this project include creating a billing consent form for future use and enrolling more patients over a longer period to show a larger benefit. Keywords include safety-net clinic, diabetes mellitus, Spanish, quality improvement