Frequent doctor visits benefit diabetics

BOSTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Frequent doctor visits result in better results in meeting blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol goals in patients with diabetes, U.S. researchers say.

Dr. Alexander Turchin, an endocrinologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who was the senior author for the study, said apart from monitoring a patient's hemoglobin A1C levels -- a type of blood glucose measurement -- every three months, there are no current recommendations in diabetes care guidelines indicating how often doctors should see their patients.

The researchers' findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, suggest doctor visits every two weeks may be appropriate for those whose diabetes is severely uncontrolled.

Researchers looked at the electronic medical records of 26,496 patients with type 2 diabetes who had at least one instance of high hemoglobin A1C, blood pressure or low-density lipoprotein, the "bad," cholesterol.

A doctor-patient encounter was defined as any note made in the record, which included face-to-face encounters, as well as remote encounters such as by telephone.

Doubling the amount of time between doctor-patient encounters increased the time it took to reach treatment goals, the study said.

The time to reach hemoglobin A1C goals increased by 35 percent in non-insulin patients and 17 percent in insulin patients, the study said. However, time to reach blood pressure and LDL cholesterol treatment goals increased by 87 percent and 27 percent, respectively.