Diabetes: Chiropody
Health
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the Answer to the right hon. Member for Leicester East of 6 February 2012, Official Report, column 143W, on diabetes: chiropody, if he will request an audit of the implementation of National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence Guideline 10: the Prevention and Management of Diabetic Foot Complications; how improvement to service provision is being supported by robust audit processes; and if he will make a statement.
Paul Burstow (Minister of State (Care Services), Health; Sutton and Cheam, Liberal Democrat)
NHS Diabetes are currently undertaking work to improve service provision of foot care for people with diabetes in England, and to pilot the auditing of this provision. There are three aspects to this work:
Looking at the structure of services. This has already resulted in foot care being included in DiabetesE (a web-based service improvement tool that supports implementation of the NICE Quality Standard for Diabetes);
Piloting the auditing of foot ulcer management; and
Diabetes foot care activity profiles.
Audit data on the management of foot ulcers are being tested in 20 pilot sites. Data collection started in September 2011 on all new cases of diabetic foot ulceration for a period of three months. Information on when the ulcer is healed or the outcome at 12 months (whichever is soonest) will also be collected. An analysis of the baseline characteristics will be presented at the Diabetes UK annual professional conference in March 2012. The National Diabetes Audit 2013 will be expanded to include further measures relating to foot care resulting from the findings of these projects.
The diabetes foot care activity profiles have been developed to provide information on the in-patient care of people with diabetes who are admitted to hospital for a range of foot care conditions. They are designed to allow those involved in the provision of this care to appreciate the scale of activity and relate this to similar trusts across England. The data used are from the Hospital Episode Statistics database and cover all episodes of in-patient care between April 2007 to
NHS Diabetes has also launched national and regional foot care networks to bring together best practice such as integrated foot care services, up-to-date guidance and tools. NHS Diabetes has produced a commissioning guide for foot care that includes an intervention map detailing all of the elements needed for the service and a service specification template.