BRIDGES

The University Hospital (UH), in Newark, New Jersey is an academic teaching hospital that cares for a low-income and minority populations with diabetes. Many UH hospitalized patients never connect to the outpatient diabetes clinic for a myriad of reasons. Our objective is to fill this gap in our diabetes care by creating a process to: 1) improve access to the outpatient diabetes clinic and 2) actively facilitate continuity in care between the inpatient and outpatient settings. The impact of the program will be a reduction in hospital emergency department visits, inpatient readmissions, and improvement in health-related quality-of-life, health behavior, and metabolic control.