Quality assurance in diabetes care: a population‐based study

The aim was to evaluate to what degree the recommendations in a health care programme for diabetes were fulfilled.

A population based study. Information was obtained from medical records.

One county with 125 000 inhabitants in Northen Sweden.

Patients: 4057 adult patients with either type 2 diabetes (n=3581) or type 1 diabetes (n=446).

Of the patients 34% had good, 22% acceptable and 24% poor metabolic control. Documentation of HbA_1c was missing for 22% of the patients. Of patients with type 2 95% were examined for nephropathy, 57% for retinopathy, 63% for neuropathy and 68% for peripheral circulation. The corresponding figures for patients with type 1 were 99%, 90%, 95% and 95% respectively.

For patients with type 1 the aims of the health care programme were largely fulfilled concerning examination of long‐term complications. In this respect screening of patients with type 2 was unsatisfactory. There is a need to optimise both metabolic control and screening for long‐term complications for a large proportion of the patients. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.