Current treatment recommendations for patients with diabetes recognize that tight control of glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors may not be appropriate for complex patients. If the risks of adverse events are greater for these patients and if the benefits of tight control are limited due to shortened life expectancy, there may be little reason to pursue tight control of A1c and CVD risk factors such as elevated low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and blood pressure (BP). To address this, guidelines recommend individualizing treatment for complex patients. unfortunately, little evidence exists to support these individualized treatment decisions. Because most drug treatment trials excluded complex patients, neither the outcomes of tight control nor the effects of the typical drug regimens used to achieve tight control are known. Existing guidelines would be significantly strengthened with this information, but it is extremely unlikely that new studies of tight control or drug treatment trials in complex patients will ever be conducted. This new information is particularly important as treatment guidelines are increasingly used to develop publicly-reported quality metrics and guide pay-for-performance (P4P) efforts. Without an evidence base to modify guidelines appropriately, physician incentives to adhere tightly to recommendations could have perverse effects that might harm patients.
Our specific aims examine the role of patient complexity in the relationship between: (1) patients'long-term and short-term control levels for A1c, LDL, and BP and overall health outcomes (ER visits, hospitalizations, and death), (2) long-term and short-term A1c, LDL, and BP control and specific health outcomes (diabetes complications and possible drug-related morbidity), and (3) typical drug regimens used to achieve A1c, LDL, and BP control and possible drug-related morbidity. Our sample includes approximately 8,300 patients with diabetes who were cared for by a large Midwestern multi-specialty physician group during 2003-2012. We link clinical data (e.g., A1c, LDL, BP values) from the electronic health record to administrative data from Medicare and two large local health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Our analytic approach involves the use of marginal structural modeling to take advantage of the longitudinal nature of our data. Overall, the results from our investigation will impact diabetes treatment guidelines, development of quality metrics, construction of pay-for-performance thresholds, and targeting of interventions.

Public Health Relevance

We propose to examine the short-term and long-term effects of tight adherence to treatment guidelines for complex patients with diabetes. For these patients, prioritization of care is critical because the short-term risks of closely following treatment guidelines may outweigh the long-term benefits. The results from our investigation will contribute to prioritizing care, revising diabetes treatment guidelines, informing quality measurement and pay-for-performance, and targeting interventions.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HS018368-05
Application #
8515357
Study Section
Health Systems Research (HSR)
Program Officer
Bartman, Barbara
Project Start
2009-09-30
Project End
2014-07-31
Budget Start
2013-08-01
Budget End
2014-07-31
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Wisconsin Madison
Department
Public Health & Prev Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
161202122
City
Madison
State
WI
Country
United States
Zip Code
53715
Chaddha, Ashish; Smith, Maureen A; Palta, Mari et al. (2018) Hypertension control after an initial cardiac event among Medicare patients with diabetes mellitus: A multidisciplinary group practice observational study. J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich) 20:891-901
DuGoff, Eva H; Walden, Emily; Ronk, Katie et al. (2018) Can Claims Data Algorithms Identify the Physician of Record? Med Care 56:e16-e20
Magnan, Elizabeth M; Bolt, Daniel M; Greenlee, Robert T et al. (2018) Stratifying Patients with Diabetes into Clinically Relevant Groups by Combination of Chronic Conditions to Identify Gaps in Quality of Care. Health Serv Res 53:450-468
Brennan, Meghan B; Allen, Glenn O; Ferguson, Patrick D et al. (2017) The Association Between Geographic Density of Infectious Disease Physicians and Limb Preservation in Patients With Diabetic Foot Ulcers. Open Forum Infect Dis 4:ofx015
Brennan, Meghan B; Hess, Timothy M; Bartle, Brian et al. (2017) Diabetic foot ulcer severity predicts mortality among veterans with type 2 diabetes. J Diabetes Complications 31:556-561
Magnan, Elizabeth M; Palta, Mari; Mahoney, Jane E et al. (2015) The relationship of individual comorbid chronic conditions to diabetes care quality. BMJ Open Diabetes Res Care 3:e000080
Magnan, Elizabeth M; Gittelson, Rebecca; Bartels, Christie M et al. (2015) Establishing chronic condition concordance and discordance with diabetes: a Delphi study. BMC Fam Pract 16:42
Wallace, Margaret L; Magnan, Elizabeth M; Thorpe, Carolyn T et al. (2015) Diagnosis and treatment of incident hypertension among patients with diabetes: a U.S. multi-disciplinary group practice observational study. J Gen Intern Med 30:768-76
Bartels, Christie M; Wong, Joanna C; Johnson, Sophia L et al. (2015) Rheumatoid arthritis and the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy. Rheumatology (Oxford) 54:1415-9
Magnan, Elizabeth M; Palta, Mari; Johnson, Heather M et al. (2015) The impact of a patient's concordant and discordant chronic conditions on diabetes care quality measures. J Diabetes Complications 29:288-94

Showing the most recent 10 out of 16 publications