The Effect of Patients' Participation in Improving Diabetes Care

Despite the advent of efficacious medicines, there is a gap between ideal and actual care in the achievement of recommended outcomes among diabetic patients. The study enrolled 429 diabetic patients attending four HMO clinics in Israel, two in the northern region and two in the southern region. All clinics were randomly selected from all clinics affiliated with the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Ben Gurion University. The objective of the study was to compare the effects of a multi-component physician-patient intervention to physician feedback alone on a combined outcome of diabetes, blood pressure and serum lipids control. We hypothesized that in medical practices where physicians have received feedback on quality of care indicators, patients who received a letter encouraging them to discuss a list of important diabetes-related issues with their doctors, would experience better outcomes compared to patients who did no received such a letter.