Defining and measuring quality of diabetes care.

The literature on diabetes mellitus has increasingly focused on the quality of diabetes care and its measurement. Serious and widespread quality problems exist throughout American medicine. Current efforts to improve will not succeed unless we undertake a major, systematic effort to overhaul how we deliver health care services, educate and train clinicians, and assess and improve quality. This article defines the components of quality of diabetes care provision and discusses approaches to their measurement individually and globally.