OnSiteClinics.Org

Diabetes Management

A study by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital demonstrated that there is a relationship between the number of interactions between a physician and the level of control of diabetes in a patient.   Those of you working in on-site clinics could have predicted this finding.   The study, published in the September 26, 2011 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine found that those patients who saw their physicians more often (every 1-2 weeks as compared to every 3-6 months for the standard A1C follow-up) met their treatment goals faster  (4.4 months compared to 24.9 months for non-insulin dependent patients and 10.1 months compared to a whopping 52.8 months for those on insulin with type 2 diabetes).

As all of you know, this also affects blood pressure and LDL cholesterol – the patients in the more frequent visit group also achieved their goals for these two indicators more quickly as well.   So, keep on doing what you are doing out there, on-site clinic staff members.  And, if you need some data to start a new push to bring patients in more often for this hard-to-manage condition, here it is.