Clinic and patient variation in intermediate clinical outcomes for type 2 diabetes: a multilevel analysis

Variation at different levels of diabetes care has not yet been quantified for low- and middle-income countries. Understanding this variation and its magnitude is important to guide policy makers in designing effective interventions. This study aims to quantify the variation in the control of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) for type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients at the clinic and patient level and determine patient and clinic factors associated with control of these outcomes in T2D.

This is a cross-sectional study within the baseline data from the impact evaluation of the Enhanced Primary Health Care (EnPHC) intervention on 40 public clinics in Malaysia. Patients aged 30 and above, diagnosed with T2D, had a clinic visit for T2D between 01 Nov 2016 and 30 April 2017 and had at least one HbA1c, SBP and LDL-C measurement within 1 year from the date of visit were included for analysis. Multilevel linear regression adjusting for patient and clinic characteristics was used to quantify variation at the clinic and patient levels for each outcome.

Variation in intermediate clinical outcomes in T2D lies predominantly (93% and above) at the patient level. The strongest predictors for poor disease control in T2D were the proxy measures for disease severity including duration of diabetes, presence of microvascular complications, being on insulin therapy and number of antihypertensives. Among the three outcomes, HbA1c and LDL-C results provide greatest opportunity for improvement.

Clinic variation in HbA1c, SBP and LDL-C accounts for a small percentage from total variation. Findings from this study suggest that standardised interventions need to be applied across all clinics, with a focus on customizing therapy based on individual patient characteristics.