Diabetes care – improvement through measurement

The National Diabetes Register (NDR) of Sweden was initiated in response to The Saint Vincent Declaration (published 1990), to provide a tool for continuous quality assurance in diabetes care. The original purpose, to monitor the results of health centres from year to year and to compare these with national and regional means, is still the most important one, while continuous follow-up of guidelines, treatments and complications are as important on a national level.The data reported contain basal clinical characteristics of the patients, as well as measures of risk-factor control and the presence of diabetes complications. Many clinics use templates within the medical record systems to verify that all information relevant to good quality assurance in diabetes care is complete, and thereafter export data to NDR. In order to create extra value, the NDR web interface, online at ndr.nu, offers functions to use when interacting with the individual patient, such as reports of all information reported to NDR, including medications and risk-factor control.The clinical results are thus reported back to the health centres (printed and instantaneously online), but are also used for scientific analyses. Such are required by the funding bodies to develop the analytical methods by quality registers, and to widely spread information, including publishing in scientific journals. Ongoing studies address, e.g., the effects of different glucose-lowering therapies, the role of ethnicity and migration, patient-reported outcomes and risks of morbidity and mortality in diabetes mellitus.