Are Primary Care Physicians More Likely to Record Diabetes on Death Certificates?

D iabetes is recorded on the death cer-tificate of decedents with known di-abetes only 38–48%of the time (1– 9). Few studies have examined whether recording of diabetes on death certificates is associated with the antemortem rela-tionship between the decedent and the certifying physician. One study of 292 di-abetic decedents with histories of isch-emic heart disease found that if the certifying physician was the personal physician, diabetes was recorded 48 % of the time, versus 33 % for another physi-cian and 8 % for a medical examiner (2). Another study found that for 104 patients with diabetes who died in the hospital, there was no relationship between the level of training of the certifying physician and the recording of diabetes (7). Our ob-jective was to examine whether primary care physicians (PCPs) are more likely than other physicians to record diabetes on the death certificates of decedents with known diabetes.