Healthcare quality improvement programme improves monitoring of people with diabetes

Question. Does a healthcare quality improvement programme, incorporating education and claims-based feedback about practice-specific models of monitoring diabetes care, increase the regularity with which primary care physicians assess people with diabetes mellitus receiving Medicare benefits? Study design. Cluster randomised controlled trial. Main results. 22, 971 Medicare recipients with diabetes who could be linked with one of 477 study physicians in 123 non-urban counties were identified. The health care quality improvement programme significantly improved monitoring of circulating glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels in people with diabetes compared with a no-intervention comparison group (see Table 1). There was no significant difference in number of eye exams or monitoring of urine protein levels between groups. A table is presented. Authors' conclusions. The population-based health care quality improvement programme, incorporating education and claims-based feedback about practice-specific models of monitoring diabetes care, improved care of people with diabetes. © 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd