Abstract
BackgroundVariation at different levels of diabetes care has not yet been quantified for low- and middle-income countries. Understanding this variation and its magnitude is important to guide policy makers in designing effective interventions. This study aims to quantify the variation in the control of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) for type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients at the clinic and patient level and determine patient and clinic factors associated with control of these outcomes in T2D.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study within the baseline data from the impact evaluation of the Enhanced Primary Health Care (EnPHC) intervention on 40 public clinics in Malaysia. Patients aged 30 and above, diagnosed with T2D, had a clinic visit for T2D between 01 Nov 2016 and 30 April 2017 and had at least one HbA1c, SBP and LDL-C measurement within 1 year from the date of visit were included for analysis. Multilevel linear regression adjusting for patient and clinic characteristics was used to quantify variation at the clinic and patient levels for each outcome.ResultsVariation in intermediate clinical outcomes in T2D lies predominantly (93% and above) at the patient level. The strongest predictors for poor disease control in T2D were the proxy measures for disease severity including duration of diabetes, presence of microvascular complications, being on insulin therapy and number of antihypertensives. Among the three outcomes, HbA1c and LDL-C results provide greatest opportunity for improvement.ConclusionClinic variation in HbA1c, SBP and LDL-C accounts for a small percentage from total variation. Findings from this study suggest that standardised interventions need to be applied across all clinics, with a focus on customizing therapy based on individual patient characteristics.
Highlights
Variation at different levels of diabetes care has not yet been quantified for low- and middleincome countries
Patients were obese with a mean body mass index (BMI) of 28.3 kg/m2 and had mean HbA1c of 8.4%, mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) of 137.7 mmHg and mean low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) of 3.0 mmol/L
Clinic level variation in HbA1c, SBP and LDL-C accounts for a small percentage from total variation
Summary
Variation at different levels of diabetes care has not yet been quantified for low- and middleincome countries. Studies have quantified variation in diabetes outcomes at patient, physician, clinic and health system levels and a majority of these were based on data from the United States of America and other high-income European nations [8,9,10]. Diabetes outcomes from these countries may not necessarily be applicable to patients in countries with low- and middle-income economies because of differences in maturity of health systems and infrastructure. Variation in diabetes care has not yet been quantified for low- and middle-income settings like Malaysia
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