Overview

The following sections summarize how Greater Cleveland’s adult patients with diabetes are doing in relation to nationally endorsed clinical measures of care processes and outcomes. We highlight achievement on our locally vetted Summary Outcome Standard and our Summary Process Standard, described in Part One, Section D. 2. b. Greater detail is provided on our individual practices’ achievement in Part Three.

We first report region-wide results on the summary standards and by individual component standards: overall, and then by patients categorized by their insurance status (Medicare, Commercial, Medicaid, or Uninsured), race (White, African-American, or Hispanic), and estimated household income (low, middle, high) and educational attainment (low, middle, high). Next, we report our region’s results by comparison to national achievement on standards of the National Committee on Quality Assurance3, reported for health plans nationwide in late 2007. The regional results reported here describe 30 practices of three large health care organizations that use electronic medical records (EMRs), including The MetroHealth System, Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. In Part Three, we also report on the region’s three Federally Qualified Health Centers (Care Alliance, Neighborhood Family Practice and Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services [NEON].)

This Report represents a “snapshot” of diabetes care and outcomes in Greater Cleveland during 2007. It covers results pertaining to about 25,000 patients cared for by over 500 primary care doctors (mostly, specialists in General Internal Medicine or Family Practice) in six health care organizations. As such, it represents a remarkable collaborative of health care providers who are committed to improving the health of their patients – almost 40% of the primary care doctors in Cuyahoga County. At the same time, this is an incomplete picture, as we know there are over 100,000 adults with known diabetes in the county6 and probably another 30,000 who have diabetes but do not know it. As a snapshot, this Report represents merely a single point in time. Future Reports will include more practices, patients, and measures of improvement as well as achievement on our standards.