Chicago businesses, doctors team up to improve diabetes care

Employers, health plans and medical groups are launching an initiative to increase care quality and cut costs for people with diabetes and other chronic diseases.

By Julie A. Jacob, AMNews staff. June 18, 2001.

In an effort to improve the quality of health care for Chicagoans with diabetes, area physicians, large employers and health plans are meeting next month to discuss best practice guidelines for treating people with the disease.

It's the first step in an ambitious collaboration among the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, the Chicago Business Group on Health and Chicago Metropolis 2020 -- a group geared to attracting more businesses to Chicago by improving the city's health, education and housing -- to enhance the quality of care for people with chronic diseases and reduce health care costs.

The initiative is modeled after the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Breakthrough Series on improving health care quality, as well as quality initiatives undertaken by Group Health Cooperative in Spokane, Wash., said Irv Pilkeny, the Chicago Business Group on Health's director of quality initiatives. Representatives from both the IHI and Group Health will attend the meeting, he said.

The organizations decided to focus on diabetes because the Chicago Business Group already had started a pilot program on diabetes care, Pilkeny said. In addition, he said, "The city has significantly poorer performance than the rest of the nation in regard to diabetes care." [...]