Collateral Benefits of Improving Glycemic Control on Lipids in a Diabetic Population

Abstract

Background: Diabetes is an illness with multiple quality indicators. This retrospective cohort study sought to determine if interventions directed at physicians to target improvements in hemoglobin A1c (HgA1c) quality indicators had collateral benefits on similarly measured low-density lipoprotein (LDL) indicators. Methods: We initially analyzed the primary care diabetic patient electronic databases from 2008 (N = 16,503) and 2010 (N = 23,040). We then identified and selected for the study the cohort of patients who appeared in both databases (N = 11,288) and analyzed various measures of process and outcomes. Results: Mean HgA1c decreased from 7.34% to 7.21% (