The Challenge

People living with diabetes and other long-term conditions are much more likely to achieve better outcomes if they have the skills and knowledge needed to manage their own health and are able to work in partnership with the people delivering their care. 

This means the delivery of safe, effective and efficient diabetes care that is seamless across organisational boundaries including primary secondary and non-traditional third sector providers.  It includes the cultural change that allows people with diabetes and healthcare professionals learn new ways of working together to achieve the levels of supported self-management needed to deliver these outcomes.

How is NHS Diabetes supporting you?

• Classification of Diabetes: NHS Diabetes has supported the development of coding, classification and diagnosis of diabetes – a review with recommendations for improvement.
• User involvement: Development of a resource to identify the best way of ensuring that people with diabetes are involved in service redesign and improvement.
• Care Planning: By working to put in place a care planning network that will address the philosophy, skills and processes needed to deliver supported self-management and achieve best outcomes .
• Education of Health Care Professionals: NHS Diabetes has developed on-line skills training to promote the safe use of insulin and is working in partnership with other organisations to identify and promote the skills of health professionals involved in diabetes care.
• Emotional and psychological support: NHS Diabetes has collaborated with many organisations to develop a comprehensive model of care for the emotional and psychological support for people with diabetes.

NHS Diabetes resources

• A Commissioning Guide (PDF 369KB) for diagnosis and ongoing care has been published. The guide includes an intervention map detailing all of the elements needed for the service as well as a contracting framework and service specification template. It supports our commissioning approach which offers a step-by-step guide in how to deliver high quality, efficient and cost effective diabetes services.
• Also, a report Coding, Classification and Diagnosis of Diabetes - March 2011 (PDF 4.5MB) by NHS Diabetes and the Royal College of General Practitioners and was published in 2010 with the intention of improving the diagnosis, classification and coding of diabetes. It provides advice and support to all clinicians involved in this often complex diagnostic challenge as well as providing free, downloadable practice audit tools to aid accurate diagnosis.
• New Report published. Diabetes Transition - Assessment of current best practice and development of a future work programme to improve transition processes for young people with diabetes