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Georgia Healthcare Leadership Council and the Institute for Wellness and Education Release Report on the State of Diabetes in Georgia

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 December 2007, 12:00 CST

ATLANTA, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Georgia Healthcare Leadership Council (GHLC) and The Institute for Wellness and Education (IWE) announced today the release of a new report on the demographics, costs and quality of care for people with Type 2 diabetes. The inaugural Georgia Type 2 Diabetes Report for 2007 presents an overview of patient demographics, hospital and provider charges, and utilization of clinical services and drug therapy for people with Type 2 Diabetes in key local markets in the state of Georgia. The Report provides data for Atlanta, Athens, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah and national benchmarks that can help employers and providers better identify opportunities to serve the needs of people with Type 2 diabetes.

"We believe you will find several improvement opportunities in this report," says Institute for Wellness and Education principal Jonathan Marquess, Pharm.D. "For instance, the proportion of Georgia's diabetes patients with at least two serious diabetes complications or comorbidities is substantially higher in Atlanta than in the state or the nation as a whole. And the proportion of commercial insurance diabetes patients receiving A1C tests in 2006 is below the national average."

Six in Ten Georgians diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes are working age

According to this report, more than six of every ten (61.5 percent) people with Type 2 Diabetes in 2006 in Georgia were between the ages of 18 and 64 years old, the prime working ages for most Americans. This was significantly more than the national average of 54.2 percent. Moreover, the percentage of Georgians diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes who had two or more complications from the disease is 14.3 percent, sharply higher than the national average of 8.4 percent.

In addition, Georgia has a higher level of female patients than the national average with 60.8 percent versus 54.9 percent for the female population of the rest of the nation.

Quality of care shows gaps still exist

The quality of care indicators for Georgians with Type 2 diabetes remains a major concern for employers who want to ensure that their employees receive appropriate care. The Georgia Type 2 Diabetes Report also provides the percentage of people with diabetes receiving recommended services, such as for glucose, Hemoglobin A1C and cholesterol blood tests, as well as eye exams and urine tests for glucose. The percentages for many of these care indicators still lag to the corresponding national averages. For example, people with Type 2 diabetes in Georgia who received a Hemoglobin A1C test (a key marker for managing diabetes) in 2006 was 71.9 percent compared to the national average of 73.9 percent. In addition, only 62.9 percent of people with diabetes received the recommended eye examination in Georgia compared to the national average of 68.8 percent, a significant difference of 6 percentage points. "While the quality of care indicators are a good way to see if patients with diabetes are getting recommended comprehensive diabetes care, they don't show if the patients are at their predefined goals for Hemoglobin A1c, LDL cholesterol, Body Mass Index (BMI) and/or Blood Pressure (BP)," noted Jim Astuto, Senior Consultant with The Institute for Wellness and Education. "Yes, we know they got their A1c tested, but we don't know where they are on the spectrum of good health for people living with diabetes. Are they in control or not, that's the $64 million dollar question!"

The IWE and the GHLC invite you to join concerned citizens and stakeholders to develop, implement, and share results of interventions that improve the health status of Georgians with obesity and diabetes. Working together, they believe we can make substantial progress. The IWE and the GHLC, with the support of sanofi-aventis, will be hosting the Atlanta Diabetes Summit in Atlanta on January 15, 2008. The meeting is intended create a forum for employers, insurers and caregivers to come together to explore innovative approaches to improving diabetes care in our community. A critical outcome of this meeting will be the development a multi-stakeholder committee to select, develop and guide local initiatives to advance diabetes care in Georgia.

The meeting will include a keynote address from Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, Professor at the University of Michigan in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Health Management and Policy, who will address the use of value-based insurance design to encourage medication compliance in chronic conditions like diabetes. "We are excited about having Dr. Fendrick in Atlanta and having the opportunity to collaborate on this level to improve diabetes care for the people of Georgia," says James Purcell, President of the Georgia Healthcare Leadership Council. "We seek to pilot value-based health benefit programs with incentives that decrease barriers to the treatment and care these patients deserve. We are working to partner with community healthcare stakeholders in order to identify market shaping programs to improve the quality and the cost of diabetes care in Georgia. We hope future annual updates of the Georgia Type 2 Diabetes Report will demonstrate that our health improvement interventions are effective."

According to reports from the Centers for Disease Control, more than 17 million Americans have diabetes, with an average of 1 million new cases being diagnosed each year in people over the age of 20. Nine out of ten of these patients have the Type 2 variety. The cost of diabetes in the US was approximately $132 billion in 2002, with $92 billion spent on medical services. The economic loss to the US economy due to higher rates of lost work time, disability and premature mortality associated with diabetes in the working population was approximately $40 billion in 2002.

About the Georgia Type 2 Diabetes Report for 2007

The Georgia Type 2 Diabetes Report for 2007 helps the Institute for Wellness and Education and the Georgia Healthcare Leadership Council to fulfill their commitment to their community health partners to promote and maintain a high quality, efficient and affordable health care delivery system. The report was produced with assistance from sanofi-aventis. All data are drawn from the Therapeutics Trends Summary(TM), part of the sanofi-aventis Managed Care Digest Series(R). The complete report is available in electronic format on GHLC's website at http://www.ghlc.org/ or the Institute for Wellness and Education website at http://www.instituteforwellness.org/ and may be downloaded free of charge.

Contact: James Purcell, President, Georgia Healthcare Leadership Council

(770) 698-0372

Georgia Healthcare Leadership Council

CONTACT: James Purcell, President, Georgia Healthcare LeadershipCouncil, +1-770-698-0372

Web site: http://www.ghlc.org/http://www.instituteforwellness.org/http://www.sanofi-aventis.us/http://www.sanofi-aventis.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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