TY - JOUR T1 - Exploring geographic variation of and influencing factors for utilization of four diabetes management measures in Swiss population using claims data JF - BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care JO - BMJ Open Diab Res Care DO - 10.1136/bmjdrc-2019-001059 VL - 8 IS - 1 SP - e001059 AU - Wenjia Wei AU - Oliver Gruebner AU - Viktor von Wyl AU - Holger Dressel AU - Agne Ulyte AU - Beat Brüngger AU - Eva Blozik AU - Caroline Bähler AU - Julia Braun AU - Matthias Schwenkglenks Y1 - 2020/02/01 UR - http://drc.bmj.com/content/8/1/e001059.abstract N2 - Introduction Four strongly recommended diabetes management measures are biannual glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) testing, annual eye examination, kidney function examination, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) testing in patients below 75 years. We aimed to describe regional variation in the utilization of the four measures across small regions in Switzerland and to explore potential influencing factors.Research design and methods We conducted a cross-sectional study of adult patients with drug-treated diabetes in 2014 using claims data. Four binary outcomes represented adherence to the recommendations. Possible influencing factors included sociodemographics, health insurance preferences, and clinical characteristics. We performed multilevel modeling with Medstat regions as the higher level. We calculated the median odds ratio (MOR) and checked spatial autocorrelation in region level residuals using Moran’s I statistic. When significant, we further conducted spatial multilevel modeling.Results Of 49 198 patients with diabetes (33 957 below 75 years), 69.6% had biannual HbA1c testing, 44.3% each had annual eye examination and kidney function examination, and 55.5% of the patients below 75 years had annual LDL testing. The effects of health insurance preferences were substantial and consistent. Having any supplementary insurance (ORs across measures were between 1.08 and 1.28), having supplementary hospital care insurance (1.08–1.30), having chosen a lower deductible level (eg, SFr2500 compared with SFr300: 0.57–0.69), and having chosen a managed care model (1.04–1.17) were positively associated with recommendations adherence. The MORs (1.27–1.33) showed only moderate unexplained variation, and we observed inconsistent spatial patterns of unexplained variation across the four measures.Conclusion Our findings indicate that the uptake of strongly recommended measures in diabetes management could possibly be optimized by providing further incentives to patients and care providers through insurance scheme design. The absence of marked regional variation implies limited potential for improvement by targeted regional intervention, while provider-specific promotion may be more impactful. ER -