Clinical Diabetes: Imagination and Innovation
- Tom A. Elasy, MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief
Forecasts are rarely sanguine. Diabetes incidence and prevalence are projected to increase as the general population gets older, bigger, and more racially diverse. (Age, obesity, and ethnic background constitute three important risk factors for diabetes.) Diabetes will result in higher rates of blindness, amputation, dialysis, stroke, myocardial infarction, and death. Onset of complications will occur at an earlier age as type 2 diabetes extends its reach to younger individuals. The burden to the individual and society will be enormous. Costs will soar.
Moreover, primary care physicians, already beseeched by every specialty organization to do more, will not have time to meet basic quality-of-care criteria. Estimates are that it would take a full-time primary care physician (panel size of 2,500) 7.4 hours/day to simply address basic preventive services in a typical practice setting.1 And that just includes those recommendations with a sound evidence base. New studies seem destined to conclude that “more is more,” notwithstanding a physician work week that easily averages 55-60 hours/week.
At the very least, new is better than old. Those who …
