The Health and Productivity Impact of Chronic Conditions Report: Diabetes

Diabetes is a metabolic condition that results in high levels of blood glucose. The most common form—type 2 diabetes—occurs as a result of impaired production of insulin. Diabetes occurs most often among older adults, particularly if they are overweight, obese, have high blood pressure or engage in little physical activity. If unmanaged, diabetes can lead to more serious health problems such as heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease. It not only degrades the quality of employees’ lives — it has business costs for employers and the economy at-large. Helping employees manage chronic illnesses remains one of the most viable strategies for reducing employers’ healthcare and disability costs. IBI’s Health and Productivity Impact of Chronic Conditions series uses high-quality data to model healthcare, illness absence (i.e., sick days) and disability costs for populations of employees across different industries. The results provide a scalable cost benchmark that employers and their supplier partners can use to assess the potential savings from reductions in the prevalence of a condition, costs of treatments, and illness-related absences and disability leaves.