Performance of Primary Care Physicians in the Management of Glycemia, Lipids, and Blood Pressure among People with Type 2 Diabetes: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Our study aimed to evaluate the performance of primary healthcare physicians (PCPs) in managing glycemia, lipids, and blood pressure in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Catalonia, Spain. Methods: We included 3267 PCPs with 367,132 T2DM subjects in a cross-sectional analysis of the SIDIAP (Sistema d’Informació per al Desenvolupament de la Investigació en Atenció Primària) database for the year 2017. Results: 63.1% of PCPs were female, with an average practice size of 1512 subjects. T2DM individuals had a mean (standard deviation) age of 70 (±12.2) years old, a mean body mass index (BMI) of 30.2 (±5.21) kg/m2, and a median diabetes duration of 8.8 years. Overall, 42.6% of subjects achieved target glycemic control (glycated hemoglobin Conclusions: Practice size, patient age distribution, and rurality are factors associated with the performance of PCPs in the control of glycemia, lipids, and blood pressure in T2DM subjects in primary health care centers in our region.

Keywords

• T2DM
• inter-professional variability
• primary health care professionals
• glycemic control
• lipids
• blood pressure