Team-based comanagement of diabetes in rural primary care.

Objective: To explore clinical indicators among patients with diabetes in southern Alberta and assess changes over time, and to compare patients with diabetes attending a reference clinic (RC), which had adapted its service model to address the specific needs of the patient population, with patients with diabetes attending comparison clinics (CCs) in the same region.

Design: Analysis of longitudinal data from the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN).

Setting: Rural southern Alberta.

Participants: A community-based family medicine clinic and the 6 other CPCSSN clinics in the same region at the time of the study.

Main Outcome Measures: A range of data elements from patients with diabetes within the RC, as well as from patients with diabetes from the CCs, were analyzed by CPCSSN to compare rates of comorbidity and mean body mass index, hemoglobin A levels, and blood pressure, as well as service use and measurement frequency. Rate of change per year was modeled longitudinally for each of the outcomes.

Results: The RC had higher proportions of patients with comorbid conditions and a consistently higher mean body mass index. Mean HbA levels varied minimally between the RC and CCs, with both sets worsening slightly. However, the rate of worsening among patients with diabetes in the RC was found to be significantly greater ( < .05) than for those in the CCs. Blood pressure also varied minimally between the RC and the CCs, with both sets improving; however, the RC had a significantly greater ( < .001) rate of improvement than the CCs did. Finally, a greater proportion of patients in the RC had complete data for these 3 outcome measures, and RC patients made a greater number of clinic visits compared with the CC patients ( < .001).

Conclusion: This study describes a team-based comanagement organizational model and might provide useful commentary about organizational effectiveness in primary care. Although improvement in health outcomes cannot be directly attributed to any specific change in clinic organization, some statistically and likely clinically significant benefit was found associated with the service model of the RC in a relatively medically and socially challenged patient population and in a conservative evaluative design.