According to the latest National Diabetes Audit, many people with diabetes are still not receiving effective care despite the fact that more are regularly seeing health professionals.
The National Diabetes Audit (NDA) is developed and delivered by National Clinical Audit Support Programme (NCASP), which is part of The Information Centre. The NDA was commissioned and sponsored by the Healthcare Commission.
The National Diabetes Audit (NDA) 2008-2009 provides overall, sequential and comparative information at GP, hospital, PCT, regional and national levels. It now includes 75 percent of the 2.2 million people with diagnosed diabetes recorded by the NHS Quality Management Analysis System (QMAS).
Among the findings, the Audit revealed that half of those participants with Type 2 diabetes and two thirds of those with Type 1 diabetes did not receive all of the nine NICE care processes which are essential to risk evaluation and selection of treatment.
A third of those with Type 2 diabetes and half of those with Type 1 diabetes did not have a urine test. No urine test means no detection of microalbuminuria and missed opportunities to prevent early diabetic kidney disease turning into more people needing dialysis or kidney transplants.
Ninety percent of people with diabetes were seen by their healthcare team during the year, yet for many this interaction did not appear to have achieved goals in risk reduction. Only two thirds of patients with Type 2 diabetes and just one third of those with Type 1 diabetes achieved an HbA1c < 7.5%.
The Audit also showed that the prevalence of diabetes has risen 25 percent over the past six years to just over 4 percent of the population - or about 2 million people.
A separate report based exclusively on 15,627 records from 124 specialist paediatric units providing care for children and young people with diabetes is also now available. Key findings from this audit include the figures that 98.6 percent of children and young people are recorded with Type 1 Diabetes and only 1.4 percent with Type 2 diabetes.
Ninety percent of children and young people with diabetes had an HbA1c value recorded in 2008–2009, but only 5.2 percent of children and young people over the age of 12 had all the NICE key processes of care recorded.
Worryingly, only 16.2 percent of those with an HbA1c measurement achieved the NICE recommended HbA1c target of< 7.5%. Nearly 30 percent of children and young people have a high risk HbA1c measure of > 9.5%
The 2008 – 2009 Audit Executive Summary and Paediatric Report are now available to download online from the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care