"Diabetes Versorgungs-Evaluation" (DIVE) - a national quality assurance initiative at physicians providing care for patients with diabetes

Background: Due to the variety of affected organ systems, necessitating a multidisciplinary and interconnected approach in deciding on individual diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, a structured documentation of data for patients suffering from diabetes mellitus is steadily gaining importance. Towards this purpose, multiple quality initiatives (e.g. SWEET, QS-DPV, EUBIROD etc.) as well as several software systems (e.g. [DPV2] DIAMAX, DPV, EMIL, Qmax etc.) have been developed to capture patient-related data. This is further complicated by the necessity to exchange data with a large variety of doctor's office administration systems. Methods: To address this complex of issues, DiabetesDE in cooperation with several societies, doctor's associations and prospective end users launched a national register platform. DIVE (Diabetes Care Evaluation) is aimed at establishing a national diabetes register to centrally capture data from diabetes patients being treated by diabetology specialists in Germany, thus making them available for quality assurance and health services research. Results: Since September 2011, 142 so far participating doctors have documented data for 84,774 patients. Compared to patients treated by general practitioners, persons under specialist care show a more advanced clinical picture with substantial co-morbidity Conclusion: DIVE provides a national platform which will address essential fields of activity with regard to the development of a national diabetes strategy - epidemiology, diabetes registry, health care research, quality assurance - based on usual office administration systems, thus contributing to the improvement of care and treatment for patients suffering from diabetes.