Identifying diabetes management opportunity areas in the USA

Publication/Presentation Date

2-2020

Abstract

Using adherence to diabetes management guidelines as a case study, this paper applied a novel geospatial hot- spot and cold- spot methodology to identify priority counties to target interventions. Data for this study were obtained from the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare, the United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the University of Wisconsin County Health Rankings. A geospatial approach was used to identify four tiers of priority counties for diabetes preventive and management services: diabetes management cold- spots, clusters of counties with low rates of adherence to diabetes preventive and management services (Tier D); Medicare spending hot- spots, clusters of counties with high rates of spending and were diabetes management cold- spots (Tier C); preventable hospitalisation hot- spots, clusters of counties with high rates of spending and are diabetes management cold- spots (Tier B); and counties that were located in a diabetes management cold- spot cluster, preventable hospitalisation hot- spot cluster and Medicare spending hot- spot cluster (Tier A). The four tiers of priority counties were geographically concentrated in Texas and Oklahoma, the Southeast and central Appalachia. Of these tiers, there were 62 Tier A counties. Rates of preventable hospitalisations and Medicare spending were higher in Tier A counties compared with national averages. These same counties had much lower rates of adherence to diabetes preventive and management services. The novel geospatial mapping approach used in this study may allow practitioners and policy makers to target interventions in areas that have the highest need. Further refinement of this approach is necessary before making policy recommendations.

Volume

8

Issue

1

First Page

1

Last Page

6

ISSN

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY- NC 4.0) license

Comments

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY- NC 4.0) license.

Disciplines

Health Services Research

PubMedID

32148738

Peer Reviewed for front end display

Peer-Reviewed

Department(s)

Department of Family Medicine, Department of Family Medicine Faculty

Document Type

Article

Rights Information

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY- NC 4.0) license.

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