Evaluación del impacto de la asistencia frecuente a las clínicas de diabetes sobre las complicaciones en pacientes con diabetes mellitus tipo 2

Diabetes is the leading cause of demand for medical care, making it the disease that consumes the largest percentage of public health care spending. If the incidence of complications increases, it causes the expenditure to increase as well. In this study we estimated the causal effect of attending at least a couple of times a year to a Diabetes Clinic on adequate glucose control and determined whether frequent visits to the doctor, at least for a year, allowed a delay in the appearance of complications. Based on longitudinal data collected by the Servicios de Salud de Hidalgo on sociodemographic information and health conditions of patients with diabetes who attended a Diabetes Clinic, a methodological approach was implemented. We implemented propensity score matching methodology for the identification of the causal effect. We found that attending twice a year to the doctor increases the probability of maintaining a stable glucose level by 64 %. While the effect of frequent visits to the doctor, in at least one year, on the patient’s complications is given by a decrease of more than 15% of the weight of disability. This evaluation yields statistically significant evidence that frequent visits to the doctor for the control of the disease leads patients with diabetes to have a better quality of life, since it is seen that the weight of disability due to diabetes complications decreases if the patient’s diabetes is treated with the same care as if he/she had a diabetes complication.