The recently published guidelines from the California Healthcare Foundation/American Geriatrics Society Panel on Improving Care for Elders with Diabetes provide recommendations that should help improve care in that population. This paper will summarize the guidelines and indicate which recommendations are evidence-based and which are based on expert opinion, as some aspects of the guidelines have not been examined in controlled clinical trials. Practitioners need to apply approaches to care that consider level of function and the patient's and family's wishes and values.