Healthcare utilisation in primary care
Healthcare utilisation of subjects consisted of contacts with general practice, drug prescriptions and referrals to allied healthcare: primary healthcare and medication. Healthcare utilisation was regarded as diabetes-related, if the care provided was mentioned in the multidisciplinary healthcare standard of the Dutch Diabetes Federation (NDF: “Nederlandse Diabetes Federatie”) [18]. We only took into account healthcare utilisation for which an ICPC code was recorded by the GP. Additional file 1 shows the definition of diabetes related healthcare for known type II diabetes patients with the corresponding ICPC-codes.