Parliament releases new Diabetes Report

Parliament releases new Diabetes Report

The All Party Parliamentary Group for Diabetes (Chaired by Keith Vaz MP, pictured here alongside Jeremy Hunt MP) published a new report on 23 November 2016: Levelling Up: Tackling Variation in Diabetes Care.  

The report was the result of an investigation into how and why the level of services varies so widely across the country, it took evidence from many patients and found some startling differences to illustrate the postcode lottery that presently still exisits.  

It makes many recommendations for local health commissioners, those that deliver education to clinicians, NHS England and the Department of Health.  

This report is timely as the Government and NHS England announced that all Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) will have the opportunity to bid for additional national funding of approximately £40 million to promote access to evidence based interventions to improve diabetes outcomes. This will be in four key areas:

  • Improving the achievement of the NICE recommended treatment targets whilst driving down variation betweet CCGs;
  • Improving uptake of structured education courses;
  • Improving access to specialist inpatient support;
  • Improving access to a multi-disciplinary foor team for people with diabetic foot disease.

It is vital that this opportunity is grasped and used wisely to transform diabetes services and tackle the variation in diabetes care. The evidence from the report shows how it can be done. The report asks what the areas who are struggling to provide quality diabetes care and support services can learn from the areas which are doing well.