NHS: Diabetic Services

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

The 3 million people living with diabetes in the UK will share my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for securing this important debate today. So, in particular, should the 850,000 people in this country who have the condition but are unaware of it, and the 7 million people he referred to who are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

I wish, first, to declare an interest as the director of communications of the British Healthcare Trade Association, but my personal interest in diabetes is longstanding. My father was an insulin-dependent diabetic. It was possibly the shock of losing a leg when wounded in the First World War that brought on his diabetic condition. He was, therefore, one of the first people in the world to benefit from insulin, as far back as the 1920s. Without it, obviously, I would not be here today. My father went on to live a relatively long life. Indeed, he was 71 when I was born and 73 when he died.

I was myself diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the relatively early age for this condition of 34, some 18 years ago, and I have been dependent on insulin for the past seven years. I am personally grateful to the staff at St Thomas’s hospital, just across the river from here, for their help and support in managing this condition, especially when I let it get significantly out of control for a long period several years ago. I had to work hard and change things in my life to achieve better control. However, the issues surrounding diabetes are of great concern not just to those who may be directly affected or those closest to them but to everyone because of the growing scale of the problem, its consequences and the costs of trying to deal with it.

The number of people with diabetes in this country is expected to increase by 23% to 3.8 million by 2020. This will have a huge impact on NHS resources unless the efficiency and effectiveness of existing services are improved. We all know about the commitment to £20 billion of efficiency savings under the Nicholson challenge. The biggest challenge in diabetes will be how to commission cost-effective care while at the same time improving the quality of services and delivering excellent outcomes for patients. To do this, we need to recognise the growing scale of the challenge. Since 1996 the number of people living with diabetes has increased from 1.4 million to 2.9 million. We need to look at the weaknesses in the system at present. In England, almost half of the people with type 2 diabetes—47 per cent of them—are missing out on the nine basic health checks recommended by NICE, such as foot care and retinopathy screening.

Fewer than one in five people with diabetes are achieving the recommended standards for controlling blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. We have to recognise that variations in the quality of care for diabetes patients cannot be explained by need or spending alone, and are influenced by the way in which local health services are organised and managed. We have to look at the human cost of diabetes and the adverse effects of the disease. The mismanagement of diabetes can lead to heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney disease and amputations that in many cases could have been prevented. More than 100 amputations take place in England every week due to diabetes, while 4,200 people in England are blind due to diabetic complications, and this figure increases by 1,280 each year. There are 24,000 people with diabetes in England who die each year from causes that could have been avoided through better management of their condition.

It is estimated that already almost 10% of the NHS budget is spent on diabetes, around £10 billion a year. When we factor in the loss of working days, early death and informal care costs, the cost of the condition to the NHS will rise to almost £40 billion by 2035. When we look at the current situation for diabetes patients, we learn from the Public Accounts Committee that NHS accountability structures have failed to hold commissioners of diabetic services to account for poor performance as they have no mandatory performance targets like those in place for other conditions such as cancer.

The committee also found that information on diabetes is not being used effectively by the NHS to assess the quality of care and to seek to improve it, and that many people with diabetes develop avoidable complications because they are not effectively supported to manage their condition.

So, what must be done? Inequalities exist in the quality of diabetes care across the country and they need to be addressed if we are to develop better outcomes for patients and improve efficiencies in the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence quality standard for diabetes should act as a benchmark to improve the quality of diabetes care.

The National Audit Office report on the management of diabetes in the NHS called for a review of the current system of incentives, so that GPs are paid for diabetes care only if they ensure that all nine care processes are delivered to people with the condition. Other recommendations call for greater collaboration and co-ordination between the new organisations and levers of the reformed NHS, such as the NHS Commissioning Board and Public Health England.

I know that NHS Diabetes is developing an implementation guide for treating diabetes patients in the NHS, which, in contrast to the diabetes action plan, will examine how diabetes care is commissioned and its implications for patients. We need to ensure that it addresses the health and economic impact of diabetes-related complications. In particular, I hope that the implementation guide will address how to reduce the variations that exist in diabetes care and the outcomes across the country.

Raising awareness of the causes, symptoms and consequences of diabetes is also crucial for increasing understanding about the disease and improving outcomes. I know from my own experience that diabetes specialist nurses play an essential role in helping patients to manage their condition and are a key source of information and advice for patients. Their posts should be protected during the current transition and all patients should have access to a named diabetes specialist nurse during their treatment.

I hope that the Government will make a commitment to the delivery of a national approach to addressing diabetes from 2013, set out by clear milestones and procedures for delivery, and using the recommendations of the National Audit Office as a guideline. The development of integrated care pathways should be encouraged as a means of reducing the postcode lottery of care for diabetes patients and reducing adverse outcomes of the disease, including mortality. Local health and well-being boards should scrutinise local commissioning plans to ensure that the delivery of diabetes services is joined up across public health, the NHS and social care. Finally, local commissioners should implement the NICE quality standard for diabetes and, where commissioners are not complying with the standard, they must be made to set out their reasons in their commissioning plans.