Patient Cohort
There is a provincial diabetes database that captures all patients in NL
diagnosed with type 1 diabetes up to 2015, based on the reporting of all
diabetes nurses and diabetes educators in the province. A description of
how cases were ascertained is available
elsewhere.11,10 Using this database, we identified
patients who turned 19 and transitioned to adult care between 2008-2013,
the last year we were able to get complete patient data. Patient records
were linked via coded identifiers to the Provincial Discharge Abstract
Database (discharges from acute care facilities). We examined the number
of patients transitioning into adult care and the basic demographic
information about them. To compare the impact of transition on
hospitalization rates, we looked at patients’ hospitalizations in the
three-year period both before and after their 18thbirthday, around the point at which they would have transitioned.