Abstract
In the most recent primary Health care strategy, primary care is identified as being definitively at the forefront of health promotion and disease prevention services (King, 2001). The International Federation of Diabetes began warning of an impending "tsunami of type 2 diabetes" at their 20th World Diabetes Congress in Montreal, Quebec in October 2008 (Lau, 2009). patients that have prediabetes are at risk of becoming type 2 diabetic and are likely to experience a slow progression of complications (Bpac, 2012). This retrospective quantitative clinical audit explored if patients with prediabetes received a glycated haemoglobin/HbA1c test in the last twelve months as per current guidelines. Further data was collected if patients had a reminder in the patient management software to prompt when the test was due. The study included two hundred and nineteen participants who were enrolled at the Green Island Medical Centre and were found to have an HbA1c reading over forty mmoL/moL and below fifty mmoL/moL. Each participant's record was reviewed in respect of the last HbA1c was recorded in the last twelve months and if the patient had a recall on the patient management software. Other measures such as lifestyle advice were also noted.
Results showed that patients with prediabetes at Green Island Medical Centre did not get an annual HbA1c twenty-two per cent of the time. Forty-seven patients of the two hundred and nineteen did not receive blood test in the last twelve months with seventeen not presenting for testing and thirty patients were not offered any testing. Recalls in the patient management system were extremely poor with eighty-three per cent of patients having no recall for annual HbA1c leaving a total of seventeen per cent of patients being managed in accordance with guidelines.