Case studies from two collaboratives on diabetes in Washington State.

Two individual teams, one from a small, rural clinic and one from a larger urban health system, were able to introduce innovations in care and realize improvement in patient outcomes.

A state-level application of the chronic illness breakthrough series: results from two collaboratives on diabetes in Washington State.

Background: Breakthrough Series Collaboratives addressing chronic conditions have been conducted at the national level and in single health care delivery systems but not at the state level. Two state-level collaboratives were conducted: Diabetes Collaborative I (October 1999-November 2000) included 17 clinic teams from across the state, and Diabetes Collaborative II (February 2001-March 2002) included 30 teams and 6 health plans.

Methods: Both collaboratives took place in Washington State, where a diverse group of primary care practices participated, and health insurance plans partnered with the clinic teams.

Hip fracture incidence in nursing home residents and community-dwelling older people, Washington State, 1993-1995.

Objectives: To establish and validate a method of linking data from the Minimum Data Set (MDS) and Medicare hospital claims, to estimate hip fracture incidence rates for Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older in Washington State, and to compare the incidence rates of hip fractures in nursing home and non-nursing home residents.

Design: Retrospective analysis of Medicare population-based enrollment, hospital claims, and nursing home administrative data sets.

Setting: Nursing home and non-nursing home setting.