by Tony Chen

(UPDATE: Amy Tenderich's post on what hospitals can do better to care for diabetes patients can be found here)

I can't help but notice that diabetes has been showing up on front pages all week long. Here are some recent headlines:

Reuters: Diabetes complications swelling US healthcare costs
USAT: Diabetes can lead to a host of consequences
HealthDay: Diabetes may lead to precursor of Alzheimer's
ChicagoTrib: Employers gang up on diabetes

By far, the biggest news was this:
UKTimes: Diabetics cured by stem cells. As with most studies like this, real treatments are still years away. Plus, this particular treatment is for Type 1 diabetes only (only 5-10% of all diabetes cases) and probably only for newly diagnosed patients. Nonetheless, this is a great development and a new hope.

All of that to say: diabetes is already a big deal and will only get bigger. Check out these amazing statistics on diabetes from the American Diabetic Association. More folks are getting it, more folks are getting it earlier, and more folks are living longer - that means a lot more complications. Diabetes is already to most common comorbidity in the US - hospitals need to be ready to provide diabetes care within complex cases.

UPDATE: Another drug in testing has been shown to be effective for TYPE 2 diabetes.

On that note, check in tomorrow - Amy Tenderich of diabetesmine (probably the most popular healthcare blog in the country) will weigh in on how hospitals can better care for diabetes patients. Amy's been busy of late. Besides winning all kinds of awards for her blog, writing an open letter to Apple, and being interviewed on Medscape, she's co-written a book called Know Your Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes.

For those with diabetes, what has your experience been? Does your hospital do anything different/special with diabetes patients?