Characteristics of our Patients and Practices

The three Tables presented here provide describe selected characteristics of adult patients with diabetes cared for in our partner practices. Collectively, the 31 EMR-based practices report their care for 23,101 patients and the Paper-based practices report their care for 2,533 patients with diabetes who were seen in their practices at least twice in the measurement period (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008).

As shown in Table 1a, sites vary widely in the number of patients with diabetes they care for (for example, among EMR practices, from 66 to 1,988), with nine sites caring for more than 1,000 patients and four sites reporting care for fewer than 200. Tables 1a-1c also describe substantial differences in the insurance status across practices (Table 1a), and in the distribution of patients across sites by race and ethnicity (Table 1b), educational attainment, and median household income (Table 1c). Although all of these traits vary widely even among the 31 EMR practice sites, these differences are even more substantial between the EMR and paper-based practice sites, with the paper-based sites caring for more Medicaid and uninsured patients (74%, vs. 13% among the EMR-based sites), racial minorities (84%, vs. 41% among the EMR-based sites), patients with lower household incomes ($23,867, vs. %40,377 among the EMR-based sites) and lower likelihood of graduating high school (70.6%, vs. 80.9% among the EMR-based sites). As can be seen in our composite achievement report, these characteristics describe relatively disadvantaged practices and patients and are associated with lower levels of achievement on our Composite Process and Outcome Standards.

Table 1a describes the insurance characteristics (Medicare, Commercial, Medicaid, Uninsured) for each EMR practice and each paper-based system.  Table 1b describes race/ethnicity breakdowns for all systems except Kaiser Permanente.  Table 1c describes Census-based estimates of average income and education level across the patients in each system.

Table 1a. Region-Wide Characteristics of our Patients and Practices, July 2007 - June 2008: Insurance

Table 1a describes the 25,620 patients across all seven participating health systems for whom insurance information is available.  This information is unavailable for 14 patients.

Table 1b. Region-Wide Characteristics of our Patients and Practices, July 2007 - June 2008: Race/Ethnicity

Table 1b describes the 18,745 patients across six participating health systems (Kaiser Permanente does not report race/ethnicity information) for whom race/ethnicity information is available.  This information is unavailable for 6,889 patients.

Table 1c. Region-Wide Characteristics of our Patients and Practices, July 2007 - June 2008: Education and Income

Table 1c describes the 25,324 patients across all seven participating health systems for whom Census estimates are available, based on either a patient's zip code or census block.  This information is unavailable for 310 patients.