Diabetes is a disease that keeps your body from making or using insulin. Insulin helps turn the food you eat into energy your body needs. When you have diabetes, your body doesn’t change food into energy as well as it should. Sugar builds up in your blood. If blood sugar stays too high, it can damage your heart, eyes, kidneys and feet.
Work with your doctor to achieve the 5 goals for living well with diabetes:
- Keep your blood pressure under 140/90 mmHg
- Keep bad cholesterol (LDL) under 100 mg/dl
- Keep blood sugar (A1C) under 8%
- Be tobacco-free
- Take aspirin daily as recommended
Talk to your doctor about your specific targets for living well with diabetes, as they may differ based on your individual needs.
Doctor Visit Checklist (PDF):
Download and print this checklist so you can make the most of your next medical appointment.
Download now >
Online Resources:
Create Your Plate
www.diabetes.org
At-home exercise tips
www.face-diabetes.com
To show you how many patients got the care they need, we show a percentage of diabetes patients in each practice who met all five of the diabetes goals. In order for a practice to get a single point, one patient must meet all five diabetes goals; missing just one goal (i.e., smoking or high blood pressure) results in the practice getting a score of zero for that patient. The higher the percentage, the better doctors and their patients did at meeting all five of the diabetes goals.
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The word ‘percent’ just means ‘per hundred.’ For example, if Sample Practice has 100 patients with diabetes, and 30 of those patients met all five of the diabetes goals, then 30 percent of Sample Practice’s patients got the care they needed. |
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