Improving Diabetes Care by Data Feedback and Diabetes Templates

Importance: Health information technology has been used to improve diabetes care and outcomes. With the implementation of our diabetes registry, we discovered several flaws in the data. Objective: The aim of this paper is to demonstrate whether improving diabetes templates in electronic medical records associated with data feedback, improves process and quality outcomes for patients with diabetes. Methods: We redesigned our chronic diseases templates and clinical flow, built a diabetes registry and used the data for feedback to educate providers, staff and address inconsistencies. A total of 724 active diabetic patients were identified in October 2009 (pre-implementation) and 731 active diabetic patients were identified in June 2011 (post-implementation). Results: The results showed an improvement in the process outcomes of ordering hemoglobin A1C every 6 months and a microalbumin every 12 months (p-value < 0.05), but no change in the quality out-comes hemoglobin A1C less than 7, blood pressure less than 140/90 and LDL cholesterol less than 100 (p-value > 0.05). Discussion: Data feedback and lessons learned were instrumental to our practice change.