The NYC A1C Diabetes Registry

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Diabetes represents a growing public health crisis in the United States. Millions of Americans suffer from diabetes, and the CDC estimates that there are an additional 8.1 million people (representing 27.8% of all diabetics) who are living undiagnosed. The costs associated with these patients (both direct and indirect) are estimated at nearly $250 billion yearly. As the number of patients increases and costs (both physical and financial) continue to grow, a number of public health departments are investigating novel ways of addressing the problem. One of the most intriguing of these programs is the New York City A1C registry.
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Managing Diabetes: A Public Health Perspective

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Diabetes, the metabolic disease which causes the elevated levels of glucose in the blood due to the body’s inability to either produce or respond to insulin, is becoming a serious concern for public health professionals. According to the CDC, 1.7 million adults were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2012 alone. The CDC states that 9.3 percent of the US population currently suffers from diabetes. Dr. Ann Albright, director of CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation, expressed her concern:
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5 Things You Should Know About the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program

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We recently blogged about a new study finding that nearly 60 percent of the variation in hospital readmission rates appears to be associated with where the hospital is located, rather than on the hospital’s performance .
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Breezing through Nashville

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As promised, I had the opportunity to present my poster “Visualizing Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Emergency Department Utilization during a Polar Vortex” at the 2014 CSTE Annual Conference in Nashville, TN. Thanks to everyone who stopped by; I think it was generally well received. As an experiment in visualization, it was a moderate success. Most folks could understand the graphics once they were explained, but the patterns were not as immediately apparent as one might want. By virtue of sharing the visualization in this forum, I was able to get helpful feedback that should improve future attempts to present information in this format.
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