Berks Diabetes News Heartens Health-Care Providers
By Steven Henshaw, Reading Eagle, Pa.
Dec. 3–Berks County had a lower admissions rate for patients with diabetes-related complications than most Pennsylvania counties did in 2004, a study revealed.
The findings show that Berks County’s primary-care physicians are providing good care to diabetic patients, local medical professionals said.
“All in all it looks like we can infer that we’re not doing too bad,” said Dr. Samuel Alfano, vice president of medical affairs at St. Joseph Medical Center, said of the Berks medical community.
Family doctors have much to do with keeping diabetics out of hospitals because Berks has few doctors who specialize in diabetes care, Alfano said.
Education and prevention are key to avoiding complications.
“If you’ve got good outpatient management — if docs out in the community are taking good care of their diabetics so they manage their sugars — then you don’t get real bad complications and end up in the hospital,” he said.
The Diabetes Hospitalization Report was released Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, a state agency that monitors trends in health care.
Berks County’s rate of about 14 hospital admissions per 10,000 residents was lower than rates in 40 other Pennsylvania counties. The state has 67 counties.
The lowest rate of hospital admissions for diabetes was 6.7 per 10,000 residents in Union County. Philadelphia had the highest rate at 37.7 per 10,000 residents.
Diabetes is a widespread, chronic disease caused by the inability of the body to produce or properly use insulin.
It predisposes people to complications, including heart disease, hypertension and stroke. In addition, it is the leading cause of new cases of blindness, end-stage renal failure and limb amputation that isn’t the result of traumatic injury.
Dr. T. Faiz Saleem, an endocrinologist at Reading Hospital, said the relatively low diabetes-admission rate for Berks County reflects that both county hospitals provide good diabetes education.
Reading Hospital opened a diabetes center two years ago to facilitate a team approach to education and care.
Controlling diabetes requires coordination among a number of different physician specialties and other practitioners, including nutritionists, Saleem said.
Statewide, hospital admissions for diabetes accounted for $673.6 million in hospital charges in 2004, a 5.1 percent increase over 2003, according to the report.
During the past five years, diabetes admissions have resulted in a total of $2.63 billion in hospital charges in Pennsylvania.
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