Hsu 2014.

Study characteristics
Methods	Long‐term glycemic control by a diabetes case‐management program and the challenges of diabetes care in Taiwan RCT (NA clusters and NA providers), conducted in 1) Intervention delivered in 27 community clinics during 2003 to 2005, Taiwan. 2) Self‐care and nutrition‐education programme delivered by National Health Research Institutes (NHRI)‐hired case managers (20 clinics) or local case managers hired by individual clinics (7 clinics). All case managers in both groups were qualified by the NHI Administration. Physicians received pay‐for‐performance (P4P) incentive. In Taiwan. 2 arms: 1. Control (standard care) (control arm) and 2. Intervention (case management in pay‐for‐performance (P4P) program) (intervention arm)
Participants	Control arm N: 271 Intervention arm N: 789, NA, NA Diabetes type: 2 Mean age: NR ± NR % Male: NR Longest follow‐up: 42 months
Interventions	Control arm: (standard care) Intervention arm: (case management in pay‐for‐performance (P4P) programme) 1) Case management 2) Team change 3) Patient education 4) Promotion of self‐management 5) Financial incentives
Outcomes	Glycated haemoglobin
Funding source	This project was supported by grants (96A1‐HDPP08–017) funded by the National Health Research Institutes of Taiwan
Notes	—
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Not reported. The participants in each clinic were randomised into 2 groups.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	From protocol: project co‐ordinating centres randomise diabetic patients.
Patient's baseline characteristics (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No data reported in text or tables. As previously indicated, the baseline characteristics – including demographics and the biochemical profiles of the intervention and control groups – were comparable [7]. However, reference 7 only includes 154 patients, while this study has 1060 patients.
Patient's baseline outcomes (selection bias)	Low risk	Figure 1A shows that the HbA1c levels were not significantly different at baseline (no asterisks at 0 months).
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias)	High risk	They have HbA1c data for 85/271 (69% lost) patients in the control group and 252/789 (68% lost) patients in the intervention group at 42 months follow‐up.
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) and of outcome assessors (detection bias)	Low risk	Our outcome of interest was objectively measured (HbA1c).
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	From protocol: periodic measurements on glucose, blood pressures, lipids and the incidence of complications will also be analysed to set up an optimal target for diabetic control in Taiwan. However, they only report HbA1c in the paper.
Risk of contamination (other bias)	Unclear risk	Only the intervention patients were followed by hired case managers. However, physicians received pay‐for‐performance (P4P) incentives for both control and intervention patients (higher amount given for intervention patients to promote recruitment of sicker patients). Quote from reference 4: "An enrolled patient can “earn” a provider 4,640 more reimbursement points than a nonenrolled patient in the first year and 3,670 points in each of the subsequent years."
Other bias	Low risk	None identified.