Cited by 130Diabetes Management and EducationDiabetes Management and ResearchPrimary Care and Health Outcomes

Improving quality of care for persons with diabetes: an overview of systematic reviews - what does the evidence tell us?

Open access
Worswick, Julia, Wayne, S Carolyn, Bennett, Rachel, Fiander, Michelle, Mayhew, Alain, Weir, Michelle C, Sullivan, Katrina J, Grimshaw, Jeremy M·2013·Systematic Reviews

Abstract

Background: Ensuring high quality care for persons with diabetes remains a challenge for healthcare systems globally with consistent evidence of suboptimal care and outcomes. There is increasing interest in quality improvement strategies to improve diabetes management as reflected by a growing number of systematic reviews. These reviews are of varying quality and dispersed across many sources. In this paper, we present an overview of systematic reviews evaluating the impact of interventions to improve the quality of diabetes care. Methods: We searched for systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of any intervention intended to improve intermediate patient outcomes and process of care measures for patients with any type of diabetes. Two reviewers independently screened search results, appraised each systematic review using AMSTAR and extracted data from high quality reviews (AMSTAR score ≥ 5). Within reviews, we used vote counting by direction of effect to report the number of studies favouring an intervention for each outcome. We produced summaries of results for each intervention category. Results: We identified 125 reviews of varying methodological quality and summarised key findings from 50 high quality reviews. We categorised reviews by quality improvement intervention. Eight reviews were broad based (involving a variety of strategies). Other reviews considered: patient education and support (n = 21), telemedicine (n = 10), provider role changes (n = 7), and organisational changes (n = 4). Reviews reported intermediate patient outcomes (e.g. glycaemic control) (n = 49) and process of care outcomes (n = 9). There was evidence of considerable overlap of included studies between reviews. Conclusions: There is consistent evidence from high quality systematic reviews that patient education and support, provider role changes, and telemedicine are associated with improvements in glycaemic and vascular risk factor control in patients. There is less evidence about the impact of quality improvement interventions on other key process measures such as screening patients for diabetic complications. This paper provides decision makers with a comprehensive overview of evidence from high quality systematic reviews about the effects of quality improvement interventions on improving diabetes care.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/2046-4053-2-26

Cites

87 of 87 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

1 retracted

Flagged first, then by citations

5 of the 92 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Williams J Jackson G Powers B Chatterjee R Prvu Bettger J Kemper A Hasselblad V Dolor R Irvine R Heidenfelder B Gray R Closing the Quality Gap: A Critical Analysis of Quality Improvement Strategies. Volume 1–Series Overview and Methodology 2004 Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 20734525
  2. Shojania K Ranji S Shaw L Charo L Lai J Rushakoff R Macdonald K Owens D Closing the Quality Gap: A Critical Analysis of Quality Improvement Strategies. Volume 2–Diabetes Mellitus Care 2004 Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 20734526
  3. Becker L Oxman A Higgins J, Green S Chapter 22: Overviews of reviews Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Version 5.1.0 (updated March 2011) edition 2011 London: The Cochrane Collaboration

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Worswick, J., Wayne, S. C., Bennett, R., Fiander, M., Mayhew, A., Weir, M. C., Sullivan, K. J., & Grimshaw, J. M.
Affiliations
  • Ottawa Hospital (CA)
  • University of Ottawa (CA)
Corresponding author
Grimshaw, Jeremy M
Venue
Systematic Reviews
Published
2013-05-07
Volume
2
Issue
1
Pages
26-26
ISSN
2046-4053 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2105352120
Cited by
130
References
92
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 1
FWCI
1.92
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Systematic Reviews (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • uO Research (University of Ottawa) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes Management and Education
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes Management and Research
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Primary Care and Health Outcomes
Keywords
diabetes care quality, quality improvement intervention, telemedicine, organizational change, glycemic control, vascular risk factor control, process of care
MeSH terms
Delivery of Health Care, Diabetes Mellitus, Humans, Patient Education as Topic, Telemedicine, Professional Role, Quality Improvement

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review