What Most Women With Diabetes Never Get Told7 min read

Why More Doctor Visits Don’t Close the Gap

One of the more counterintuitive aspects of the findings is that women with diabetes tend to have more contact with the healthcare system than the average person — yet they’re still missing preventive services. Neha Narula, MD, a clinical assistant professor and primary care doctor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, noted that what stood out most was precisely this paradox: more frequent healthcare interactions, but still falling short across multiple areas of preventive care. This suggests the issue isn’t simply about access to doctors in a general sense. Something structural within those healthcare encounters is causing these services to be overlooked, even when a patient is already engaged with the medical system.

How the Fragmented System Plays a Role

Experts point to the structure of the U.S. healthcare system as a contributing factor. Care coordination between specialists and primary care providers is inconsistent, and there’s often no designated person responsible for making sure all recommended preventive services are being tracked. When a patient’s medical care is primarily focused on managing a chronic condition like diabetes, other health maintenance tasks can fall through the cracks — not because anyone intends to neglect them, but because no one is explicitly tracking them. Wisk described it directly: if one provider is focused on diabetes, someone else needs to be ensuring preventive care is happening, and that coordination doesn’t always occur in practice.