Conducting a Diabetes Assessment

General Assessment Tool

To make a general assessment of diabetes in your company you will need to complete the following four steps:

1. Identify the potential prevalence of diabetes in your company.
    
2. Determine the total medical costs for employees with diabetes.
    
3. Determine the total medical costs for employees without diabetes.
    
4. Assess health care costs and the need for action.
    

Step 1.  Identify the potential prevalence of diabetes in your company

Enter the total number of employees in the box below. (This figure is used to automatically calculate your assessment.)

Step 2. Determine the total medical costs for employees with diabetes

Step 3. Determine the total medical costs for employees without diabetes

A. Estimate the number of employees without diabetes.

B. Find the total medical costs for people without diabetes.

Step 4. Assess Health Care Costs and the Need for Action

It may be helpful to compare the health care costs and use this as a call to action to improve outcomes.

As you assess these general findings, ask yourself:

• Does my company need to lower its costs associated with diabetes? _______
• Would my employees benefit from some type of diabetes and/or other health promotion program? _______
• Do I need to add to my company’s diabetes and health promotion activities or create new activities? ________

If you answered YES to any of these questions, go to the Planning Guide and create the diabetes and health education programs that best meet your needs.

If you do not feel your company would benefit from a specific diabetes education program at this time, you may still want to consider still providing employees with information that can help them prevent the onset or lower their risk for attaining such chronic diseases as diabetes and high blood pressure. Go to Diabetesatwork.org to learn how you can create health education programs that can help employees lead healthy lives.

Note: If you want to calculate all the diabetes-related costs for each employee, contact your health care plan about obtaining a list of codes for diabetes care from the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9 CM). The ICD-9 CM coding system is used to code signs, symptoms, injuries, diseases, and conditions. These codes help health care providers, health care consultants, and insurers to calculate medical costs.

If you think your company would not benefit at this time from a diabetes education program, please revisit this site when you think your company's needs have changed.

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* These costs reflect both diabetes- and non-diabetes-related care. People without diabetes also have health care costs. These costs are based on the ADA's Economic Costs of Diabetes in the US in 2002, Diabetes Care 26; 917-932, 2003.