1.0.0.0In­tro­duc­tion:

1.1.0.0 Overview

Di­a­betes is a com­plex, chron­ic ill­ness re­quir­ing con­tin­u­ous med­i­cal care with mul­ti­fac­to­ri­al risk-‍re­duc­tion strate­gies be­yond glycemic con­trol. On­go­ing pa­tient self-‍man­age­ment ed­u­ca­tion and sup­port are crit­i­cal to pre­vent­ing acute com­pli­ca­tions and re­duc­ing the risk of long-‍term com­pli­ca­tions. Significant ev­i­dence ex­ists that sup­ports a range of in­ter­ven­tions to im­prove di­a­betes out­comes.

The Amer­i­can Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion’s (ADA’s) “Stan­dards of Med­i­cal Care in Di­a­betes,” re­ferred to as the Stan­dards of Care, is in­tend­ed to pro­vide clin­i­cians, pa­tients, re­searchers, pay­ers, and other in­ter­est­ed in­di­vid­u­als with the com­po­nents of di­a­betes care, gen­er­al treat­ment goals, and tools to eval­u­ate the qual­i­ty of care. The Stan­dards of Care rec­om­men­da­tions are not in­tend­ed to pre­clude clin­i­cal judg­ment and must be ap­plied in the con­text of ex­cel­lent clin­i­cal care, with ad­just­ments for in­di­vid­u­al pref­er­ences, co­mor­bidi­ties, and other pa­tient fac­tors. For more de­tailed in­for­ma­tion about man­age­ment of di­a­betes, please refer to Med­i­cal Man­age­ment of Type 1 Di­a­betes (1) and Med­i­cal Man­age­ment of Type 2 Di­a­betes (2).

The rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude screen­ing, di­ag­nos­tic, and ther­a­peu­tic ac­tions that are known or be­lieved to fa­vor­ably af­fect health out­comes of pa­tients with di­a­betes. Many of these in­ter­ven­tions have also been shown to be cost-‍ef­fec­tive (3).

The ADA strives to im­prove and up­date the Stan­dards of Care to en­sure that clin­i­cians, health plans, and pol­i­cy mak­ers can con­tin­ue to rely on them as the most au­thor­i­ta­tive and cur­rent guide­lines for di­a­betes care. To im­prove ac­cess, the Stan­dards of Care is now avail­able through ADA’s new in­ter­ac­tive app, along with tools and cal­cu­la­tors that can help guide pa­tient care. Read­ers who wish to com­ment on the 2019 Stan­dards of Care are in­vit­ed to do so at pro­fes­sion­al.di­a­betes.org/‍SOC.