Diabetes currently afflicts 29 million people in the U.S.—about 9% of the population—and that proportion is expected to increase to 30% by 2050.

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Diabetes can cause devastating impacts, including heart disease, stroke, and blindness. In 2010, diabetes was the seventh-leading cause of death in the U.S., and in 2012, its estimated costs were $245 billion.

CHR has been a leader in diabetes research for more than 25 years. In 1989, we helped Kaiser Permanente develop one of the country’s most comprehensive registries of patients with diabetes. We developed the registry so that the health care system could identify its diabetes patients to ensure that they received blood sugar testing and foot exams. However, it also proved very useful for research on diabetes and its complications, making it possible to conduct studies that help clinicians to better serve patients and to help patients better manage their disease.

CHR recently took the lead role in building a massive new dataset of patients with diabetes. The three-year project, called SUPREME-DM (Surveillance, Prevention, and Management of Diabetes Mellitus), created a national infrastructure that will enable many years of comparative effectiveness research on diabetes prevention and treatment. The SUPREME-DM DataLink comprises about 1.3 million adult members with diabetes as well as patients at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes in the membership of each of 11 participating health systems.

Featured Study

Dissemination of CVD Risk Factor Treatment Among Diabetic Patients in FQHCs

Adults with diabetes who take aspirin, statins, and ACE inhibitors can dramatically reduce their risk of cardiovascular events. Kaiser Permanente has committed to putting members with diabetes on this drug regimen, using the electronic medical record to identify the right patients and remind providers to start these patients on the medications. We sought to implement the same protocol for patients at 11 community health centers (CHCs) in Oregon. Our goal was to assess whether KP’s program could be successfully disseminated in those settings, and whether it can affect the percentage of eligible patients who are prescribed and refill the target medications. We demonstrated that this intervention to improve delivery of guideline-concordant care could be adapted for and implemented in CHCs, and that doing so significantly improved care quality in CHCs.

 

Gregory Nichols, PhD
Principal Investigator
Funder: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

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