Objective: To describe the effects of a long-term intervention including 72% of Israeli diabetes patients, aimed at improving diabetes care in a primary care setting.
Design: A retrospective periodic population-based cross-sectional study.
Setting: Two health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in Israel-intervention and control.
Participants: All diagnosed diabetes patients enrolled in both HMOs.
Intervention: Multifaceted interventions directed toward primary care providers, including educational strategies, registries, clinical pathways, care quality indicators, computerized reminders and feedback.
Main outcome measures: Performance in quality indicators, compared with an HMO that did not implement an intervention program.
Results: The prevalence of diabetes increased from 20.2/1000 in 1995 to 63.7/1000 in 2007. Annual testing of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) rose from 22% in 1995 to 88% in 2007. The corresponding figures for low-density lipoprotein (LDL) were 23 and 89%, and for microalbumin 10 and 69%, respectively (P< 0.0001 for all comparisons). The proportion of HbA1c ≤7% increased from 10 to 53%, while HbA1c >9% decreased from 40 to 13% (P< 0.0001). Good control of LDL ≤100 mg/dl increased from 26 to 59% (P< 0.0001). In the comparison HMO, subtle increases in the performance of HbA1c (55.8-63.4%), LDL (59.7-67.0%) and microalbumin (55.1-67.6%) were noted between 2005 and 2007, respectively. HbA1c ≤7 and >9% remained stable (36 and 13%, respectively), while LDL ≤100 mg/dl rose from 38 to 44% in the control HMO.
Conclusion: A community-oriented program for diabetes care led to improvements in performance of tests, as well as control of HbA1c and LDL among 72% of diabetes patients in Israel.