Diabetic patients in chronic disease management programmes live longer

Elderly patients with diabetes who are treated in a chronic disease management programme are less likely to die of their disease than patients not in a programme, German data released last week indicate.

The study, which will be published in Diabetes Care, involved 11 100 diabetic patients from 400 general practices across Germany and was commissioned by the country’s largest health insurance fund, Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, to evaluate the effectiveness of such programmes.

The patients, all of whom belonged to the insurance fund, had an average age of 70 and were being treated with antidiabetes drugs. But 2300 of them were in a chronic disease management …