Continuing Stability of Center Differences in Pediatric Diabetes Care: Do Advances in Diabetes Treatment Improve Outcome? The Hvidoere Study Group on Childhood Diabetes
Response to de Beaufort et al.
- Stuart Chalew, MD
- From the Pediatric Endocrinology Children’s Hospital of New Orleans and LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana
- Address correspondence to Stuart Chalew, Director, Pediatric Endocrinology Children’s Hospital of New Orleans and LSU Health Sciences Center, 200 Henry Clay Ave., New Orleans, LA 70118. E-mail: schale{at}lsuhsc.edu
The Hvidoere Study Group is to be commended for their efforts to elucidate demographic, ethnic, and treatment factors associated with disparities in mean A1C that persisted between participating pediatric diabetes clinics despite similar treatment goals and management techniques (1). It was disheartening that none of the evaluated factors, with the possible exception of language difficulties, yielded an easy-to-implement way to improve mean A1C levels within clinics or reduce A1C differences between clinics.
The authors mention that two clinics markedly improved their mean clinic A1C and hint that improvement may have been …
