September 2009

Treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and its complications places a heavy burden on healthcare budgets in China and will continue to do so.

Reporting physician group performance in addition to health plan performance may stimulate greater improvement in diabetes care.

Use of Toyota production system methods as part of a nosocomial MRSA prevention initiative on a surgical unit improved quality of care in other areas.

Health policy must promote the ability of smaller systems to use sophisticated, rigorous, and less-than-perfect study designs to evaluate the impact of their local programs.

Family physicians failed to identify most obese and overweight patients, as seen by lack of body mass index documentation and concordant medical diagnoses.

Processes and outcomes of diabetes care improved substantially over 6 years in a managed care health plan with a comprehensive diabetes disease management program.

Various changes to the Part D benefit were made in 2009, including availability of the data for research and increased cost of the standard benefit.

A predictive health economic model indicated that Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is cost-effective in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus compared with medical management.

A systematic literature review from 1998 to 2003 showed that few cost-effectiveness analyses of self-administered medications model suboptimal medication adherence.

Prior authorization was successfully implemented in a managed care setting to obtain 100.0% performance of A1C testing in patients with diabetes treated with expensive drugs.

A 12-month evaluation of a patient-centered medical home demonstration indicated improvement in quality of care without an increase in overall costs.