Background: There is a large volume of systematic reviews addressing quality of care initiatives in diabetes. To date, modest attempts have been made to synthesise the evidence to make it accessible for policy or decision makers. Objectives: To complete a comprehensive overview of systematic reviews assessing the effects of quality of care initiatives in diabetes management. Methods: The Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group undertook the overview in two phases. The first involved indentifying all relevant systematic reviews; evidence mapping reviews into primary intervention areas; performing quality appraisal of the reviews; and summarising preliminary findings from key reviews of select intervention categories. The second phase involved refining the outcomes of interest and selecting an appropriate and comprehensive taxonomy to classify the range of interventions and their targets (health care providers, patients and their care-givers, and health care systems). Dual data extraction was completed for relevant moderate-to-high quality reviews. Decision rules were created to help synthesize the evidence within and across reviews. Summary findings of the effects of the interventions on improving the management and quality of care of persons with diabetes were compiled. Conclusions: Conducting overviews enables a higher level analysis with a broader scope to allow for multiple questions and interventions. Consequently, the overview methodology can be used as a critical appraisal tool of the best evidence. The overview process is a relatively new approach to synthesizing systematic review evidence and, while methods are not well established, it is a growing area of interest.