Disease management in diabetes care: When involving GPs improves patient compliance and health outcomes

Although the study of the association between interventions in primary care and health outcomes con-tinues to produce mixed findings, programs designed to promote the greater compliance of GeneralPractitioners and their diabetic patients with guidelines have been increasingly introduced worldwide,in an attempt to achieve better quality diabetes care through the enhanced standardisation of patientsupervision. In this study, we use clinical data from the Diabetes Register of one large Local Health Author-ity (LHAs) in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna Region for the period 2012-2015. Firstly, we investigate whether GPs’participation in the local Diabetes Management Program (DMP) leads to improved patient compliancewith regional guidelines. Secondly, we test whether the monitoring activities prescribed for diabetics bythe Regional diabetes guidelines have a positive impact on patients’ health outcomes and increase appro-priateness in health care utilization. Our results show that such a Program, which aims to increase GPs’involvement and cooperation in following the Regional guidelines, achieves its goal of improved patientcompliance with the prescribed actions. In turn, through the implementation of the DMP and the greaterinvolvement of physicians, Regional policies have succeeded in promoting better health outcomes andimproved appropriateness of health care utilization.