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What is being measured?
The 'A-1-C' test is a blood test that measures the average level of blood sugar during the past 2 or 3 months. If you have diabetes, the A-1-C test is different from blood testing you might do yourself. When you test your blood, you find out what your blood sugar is at the moment you do the test. But when you have the A-1-C laboratory blood test, you find out how well your blood sugar has been controlled, on average, over a period of time.
Often, there are no symptoms to warn people when their blood sugar has been staying too high. To know for sure whether blood sugar is staying at a healthy level or not, people with diabetes need to have an A-1-C test at least twice a year. Keeping blood sugar close to normal helps prevent or delay the health problems that can happen when people have diabetes.
The quality score is based on the percentage of adult patients (ages 18-75) with diabetes who got the A-1-C blood sugar test at least once during a recent one-year period.
For this test, what is meant by better, average, and below?
For each doctor's office, the percentage of patients with diabetes who got an A-1-C test is turned into a quality score by comparing the percentage for that doctor's office to the statewide average of 87.00%.
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'Better' means 94.10% of patients got the A-1-C test
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'Average' means between 80.0% and 94.0% of patients got the A-1-C test
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'Below means 79.90% or fewer of patients got the A-1-C test
How can you use this information?
If you have diabetes, talk with your doctor about whether it is time for your next A-1-C blood sugar test.
