Quality improvement in practice: improving diabetes care and patient outcomes in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services

Table 1 Proportion of patients for whom diabetes management activities were recorded in the electronic patient and information recall system during the audit period, and corresponding values from the final years of other studies

	Study sites					National indigenous PHC^§	DAHS 2008-09^¶
	DAHS	ACCHS-2	ACCHS-3	ACCHS-4	All ACCHS	National indigenous PHC^§	DAHS 2008-09^¶
No. of patients included in the study	156	76	87	29	348
Proportion female	66%	79%	57%	55%	66%
Median age	55	52	46	55	52
Age range	22 - 88	25 - 88	19 - 82	30 - 87	19 - 88
Blood pressure^†	80%	80%	84%	55%*	79%	70-88	80%
HbA_1c ^†	71%	82%	59%	28%	66%	56-74	74%
Weight^†	72%	70%	56%*	48%*	66%	51-77	74%
Urine protein^‡	53%	49%	52%	28%*	50%	42-63
ACR^‡	67%	72%	71%	31%*	66%	46-65	81%
eGFR^‡	94%	89%	87%	48%*	88%		94%
Cholesterol^‡	79%	76%	71%	38%*	73%		91%
Liver function tests^‡	92%	87%	83%*	48%*	85%
Full foot check^‡	14%	5%*	5%*	3%	9%	4-40
Retinal screen^‡	35%	26%	24%	0%*	28%	29-56
Diet and physical activity^†	33%	22%*	1%*	0%	20%	19-56
Smoking assessment^†	48%	28%*	1%*	7%*	28%	24-92	85%
GPMP^‡	27%	11%*	15%*	28%	20%

DAHS = Derby Aboriginal Health Service. PHC = primary health care. HbA_1c = glycated haemoglobin. eGFR = estimated glomerular filtration rate. ACR = albumin creatinine ratio. GPMP = general practice management plans.
*Significant difference compared with DAHS p < 0.05.
^§Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients treated in PHC settings [30, 34–36].
^¶Final year of the “DAHS diabetes study” [28].
^†Recorded from 1 Jan 2012 to 30 June 2012.
^‡Recorded from 1July 2011 to 30 June 2012.

ISSN: 1472-6963