Diabetes is one of the most common and costly chronic medical conditions in the United States. An estimated 18.2 million Americans have diabetes mellitus. It is the sixth leading cause of death for Americans overall and an even more serious problem for many racial and ethnic minority populations. It is estimated that direct and indirect costs of diabetes care are $132 billion per year, and the NQF has identified diabetes as a national priority for healthcare quality measurement and reporting.
The NQF has endorsed as voluntary consensus standards a set of performance measures for adult diabetes care for both accountability and quality improvement purposes. This project is establishing consensus on updates to that measure set, as proposed by the National Diabetes Quality Improvement Alliance, a collaboration of 13 national, public and private healthcare provider, accreditation, regulatory, research, and patient advocacy organizations, as well as measures from AHRQ. In May 2005, NQF endorsed nine consensus standards for public reporting of diabetes care; 37 quality improvement-only and community-level proposed consensus standards are pending.