Long-term effects of a diabetes boot cAMP on measures of diabetic care

Diabetic patients should receive self-management education to improve self-care and quality of life but are frequently unable to attend such programs because of the time commitment. We instituted an intensive 2-hour Diabetes Boot Camp to provide this education in a condensed time frame. The objective was to determine the long-term effect of the boot camp on mean hemoglobin A1c (HgA1c) levels in patients with diabetes compared to diabetic patients receiving the standard of care.

The Diabetes Boot Camp population was defined as all diabetic patients referred to the boot camp from the 10 highest utilizing physicians between August 2009 and August 2010. A control population was randomly selected from these same physicians' diabetic patients during the same period. Baseline and postintervention HgA1c measurements on the same patients in both groups were extracted from the electronic medical record. Subpopulations studied included those with HgA1c ≥9% and <9% at baseline. To evaluate long-term effects, we compared HgA1c levels 3 years later (between July 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012) for all groups.

Using comparison-over-time analysis, the overall boot camp group (n=69) showed a mean decrease in HgA1c from 8.57% (SD ± 2.32%) to 7.76% (SD ± 1.85%) vs an increase from 7.92% (SD ± 1.58%) to 8.22% (SD ± 1.82%) in the control group (n=107, P<0.001). Mean length of follow-up was 3.2 (SD ± 0.54) years.

An intensive 2-hour multidisciplinary diabetes clinic was associated with significant long-term improvements in glycemic control in diabetic participants of the clinic.