For six years, AtlantiCare, the region's largest health care provider and the city's largest non-casino employer, has been working to tackle diabetes. In 2007, facing rising health care costs, even among its own employees, AtlantiCare opened the Special Care Center, an invitation-only special clinic aimed at helping the chronically sick by pairing them with health coaches and offering them free medicines and office visits. A second clinic opened in nearby Galloway in 2011. The clinics have treated 2,600 patients, including many with uncontrolled diabetes, and has produced stunning results: Reductions in blood sugar levels, a 40 to 45 percent decline in hospitalizations and emergency room visits and a virtual elimination of complications.
