Reimbursement for Diabetes Self-Care Training: The North Carolina experience

The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) results prove that in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), the better the level of glucose control, the lower the prevalence of complications. The team approach to help these patients is revalidated. Reimbursement for these required services has improved, but varies widely from state to state. All parties involved face the problems of translating the results to a larger diabetic population and of confronting the very real issue of how the services required to care for the disease can be made affordable and available to this patient population. These problems are very similar to those presented by the publication of standards for patient education in 1980 and its revision in 1983 (1).