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Diabetes Mellitus

Why Employers Care

Diabetes Mellitus (diabetes) is taking a toll on the U.S. population. Over the past 50 years, rates of diabetes have increased four to six fold. Approximately 23.6 million people-7.8 percent of the population- have diabetes, though 17.9 million are diagnosed while 5.7 million remain undiagnosed.1 An additional 1.6 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed yearly1. In 2006, diabetes was considered the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.1

In 2007, annual national expenditures on diabetes, including both direct medical and indirect costs, equaled $174 billion.1 The 2007 per capita annual costs of health care for people with diabetes is $11,744 a year, of which $6,649 (57%) is attributed to diabetes.2 One out of every five health care dollars is spent caring for someone with diagnosed diabetes, while one in ten health care dollars is attributed to diabetes.2

What is Diabetes?
People with diabetes have impaired insulin production or uptake. Diabetics cannot effectively utilize the nutrients they ingest because their body lacks an ingredient it needs to efficiently mediate the breakdown of food. There are two types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2.
  • Type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependant diabetes mellitus (IDDM) or juvenile-onset diabetes) is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks and destroys insulin producing cells in the pancreas.
  • Type 2 diabetes (non-insulin-dependant diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or adult onset diabetes) is the most common form of the disease. Most people with type 2 diabetes have the following problems:
    1. The pancreas does not produce enough insulin to meet an individual's metabolic needs, and
    2. Cells do not effectively use the available insulin.

What Can An Employer Do?

Research shows that good glycemic control may help reduce the incidence of long-term diabetes complications like vision decline, kidney disease or damage, nerve damage, and microvascular disease. As such, employers should consider the following activities:
  1. Understand the burden of diabetes among your employees
  2. Develop a supportive work environment
  3. Identify ways to improve diabetes care as provided by company health plan(s), disease-management vendor(s), etc
  4. Implement education programs to teach employees about diabetes and other diabetes-related diseases
All Business Group Diabetes Mellitus Resources/Publications

This link will take you to a chronological list of Business Group resources that are related to this topic. For additional search options please visit Publications. Most resources are available only to members of the National Business Group on Health and are designated with .


Other Diabetes Mellitus Resources



Updated 07/20/2009

 

1 National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (NDIC). National diabetes statistics, 2007. Available at: http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/DM/PUBS/statistics/#allages. Accessed July 17, 2009.
2 American Diabetes Association. Direct and indirect costs of diabetes in the United States. Available at: http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-statistics/cost-of-diabetes-in-us.jsp. Accessed July 17, 2009.

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