Cindy,
I agree with Nopie here. Whether or not your sister is non-compliant, her doctor is sick and tired of banging his head against the wall, trying to convince his patients to take proper care of themselves. How frustrating to spend your days lecturing people for not eating properly. I'm not entirely sure that you could ever have great sugars if you followed the prescribed diet, so they are literally chasing their tails. Even if they convince someone to be compliant, they are eating too many carbs. And those carbs, just feed the addiction, and boom! where's those Krispy Kremes?
I had A1C's much worse than hers for years. My usual semi annual A1C was between 7-8 (126 to 144) and the doctor never really seemed to be alarmed by it. He would say "It's a little high... but we aren't going to put you on anything else" (I've been on metformin since diagnosis in Dec '96) until I finally had an A1C result over 180 which made him want to put me on Avandia as well as the metformin. I decided not to start the med and found Atkins instead.
BTW, my last appointment, when I told the endo that I was doing Atkins, he was very happy. Happy with my results too, A1C went down to 7 (I had whooping cough those three months, so I'm really hoping to get a better result when I go back in June, just had the blood drawn yesterday) and my chol was lowered, the ratio improved. The doctor himself was more vivid and lively than I'd ever seen him before, because he saw that I was now committed to my health.
Your sister won't get anything more than what she puts in to her health. The doctor isn't going to put himself out there to support and help her, if he senses her disinterest, because there's just no way that he can tell her exactly what to do every step of the way. If a diabetic isn't interested in managing their diabetes properly, there isn't a thing in this world that you or her doctor can do to change it... I'm speaking from experience of being the diabetic who wasn't interested....

Jenn