Did you know that 30 percent of all Americans have pre-diabetes? This means that their blood sugar levels are higher than normal, and are at risk to climbing to a diabetic level. If pre-diabetics are able to diet and exercise, they may be able to get their blood sugar levels back down to normal before they become a diabetic and need to deal with the medications and blood sugar levels.

Those who are told about their pre-diabetic condition early on can start making lifestyle changes right away, and effectively lower their risk of contracting diabetes. A recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine announced that the potential of developing diabetes was 30 to 40 percent lower for couples who ate healthy, were moderate with their alcohol consumption. Also, those who didn’t smoke, and those who exercised regularly were at a lower risk to obtaining this disease.

Making better lifestyle choices can drastically reduce your risk of diabetes, but a pre-diabetic wouldn’t know this if he or she wasn’t told. In fact, many doctors are failing to tell their patients that they are pre-diabetic. They forget to tell them to exercise and eat right in order to preserve their health for the future. Only one in every three pre-diabetics gets dietary and exercise advice from a doctor. In many cases, the doctors say that they gave health counseling to their patient, even though they didn’t.

According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, health counseling is key for diabetic patients. Doctors are often supposed to report their counseling endeavors in the medical records. Yet the advent of online records has given doctors the temptation to record false information. Some doctors don’t record counseling at all, while others tend to cut and paste their doctor’s records from a previous visit. If they didn’t mention that you need to be exercising, they don’t mind. They still cut and paste a previous visit and are done with your appointment.

Only patients whose doctor’s recorded that they were actively counseling them in healthy habits saw improvement over months of observation in the study. Doctors who appeared to cut-and-paste their visit reports into their electronic records did not see any improvement in their patients, causing hospitals to wonder if the doctors were being honest in the reports. Doctor Kenny Lin says that he remembers being in medical school, and using electronic medical records to report his encounters with patients. He says that not long into his studies, a senior doctor explained to him that he did not need to record every visit with every patient in the hospital.

Instead, he said that he could copy and paste his encounters from yesterday, and even add actions that didn’t happen. The senior doctor told Lin that it was all about what he had aimed to do. If forgot to remind a patient that he or she should stop smoking, he could still document tobacco cessation counseling. No one would question the white lie. Health counseling is key for pre-diabetics, who can end up with intense health complications if they don’t get the counseling that they need. When doctors lie about their efforts to push patients towards better health habits, it puts those people at risk. If you were not counseled about your health, and were at risk to diabetes at the time, then you may be able to sue. This is especially true if you later contracted diabetes because you were not warned of your pre-diabetic condition. Talk to a lawyer today and secure representation in your medical malpractice case!