High adherence to recommended diabetes follow-up procedures by general practitioners is associated with lower estimated cardiovascular risk.

AIMS

To explore whether the general practitioners' (GPs') performance of recommended processes of care was associated with estimated risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and poor glycaemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study from Norwegian general practice including 6015 people with type 2 diabetes <75 years old, without CVD and their 275 GPs. The GPs were split into quintiles based on each GP's average performance of six recommended processes of care. The quintiles were the exposure variable in multilevel regression models with 10-year risk of cardiovascular events estimated by NORRISK 2 (total and modifiable fraction) and poor glycaemic control (HbA >69 mmol/mol (>8.5%)) as outcome variables.

RESULTS

The mean total and modifiable estimated 10-year CVD risk was 12.3% and 3.3%, respectively. Compared with patients of GPs in the highest-performing quintile, patients treated by GPs in the lowest quintile had an adjusted total and modifiable CVD risk that was 1.88 (95% CI 1.17-2.60) and 1.78 (1.14-2.41) percent point higher. This represents a relative mean difference of 16.6% higher total and 74.8% higher modifiable risk among patients of GPs in the lowest compared with the highest quintile. For patients with GPs in the lowest-performing quintile, the adjusted odds of poor glycaemic control was 1.77 (1.27-2.46) times higher than that for patients with a GP in the highest quintile.

CONCLUSIONS

We found a pattern of lower CVD risk and better glycaemic control in patients of GPs performing more recommended diabetes processes of care.