NHS Diabetes is a service improvement team working with managers, commissioners and providers of diabetes services to improve the quality of care for people with diabetes.

We act as an expert resource and support team to help healthcare professionals implement evidence-based good practice which both improves outcomes and reduces costs.

We work with the National Clinical Director for Diabetes Dr Rowan Hillson MBE, the Department of Health and also in partnership with people with diabetes.  We collect ideas and issues from the diabetes community. 

Our objectives

The team’s overall objective is to ensure better outcomes for people with diabetes. To do this, diabetes services must be effective and patient experience and safety must be paramount.

Our priorities

More specifically we aim to achieve these objectives through our priorities, which for 2012/13 include:

• Reducing unacceptable variation in care through running national audits and spreading examples of what works
• Ensuring patients remain at the heart of everything we do through involving them in the development of all our work programmes

• Continued support for better commissioning of integrated diabetes services by encouraging use of our tools, on-line resources and expert commissioning support team
  
• Supporting services to deliver the outcomes referenced in the NHS Operating Framework 2012-13 and NICE Quality Standards for Diabetes through our series of specialist networks
  
• Improving patient safety through our Safe Use of Insulin e-learning module and suite of new courses, including intravenous insulin infusions, management of hyperglycaemia and oral anti-diabetic agents
  
• Deliver quality improvement by offering a collection of resources aimed at improving aspects of diabetes services
  
• Supporting hospitals to reduce diabetes medication errors on the wards and to improve inpatient audit results
  
• Working hard to improve care for older people in care homes by providing tools, education and support for healthcare professionals to improve the quality of patient care
  
• Preparing for the new paediatric diabetes PbR tariff with all paediatric diabetes units in England through supporting regional paediatric network outcomes
  
• Better access to robust health information and data by supporting developments in the National Diabetes Information Service to ensure quality improvement priorities are evidence-based.