Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how long on average diabetic patients spent in hospital in (a) 205, (b) 2016 and (c) 2017.

NHS Digital were able to provide the following data that details the mean number of hospital bed days for people admitted to hospital who have diabetes (as recorded in the National Diabetes Audit) in 2015-16 and 2016-17.

2015-16: 13.9 bed days

2016-17: 13.9 bed days

Source: The data was taken from the Hospital Episode Statistics data set for England linked to the National Diabetes Audit, therefore the time periods used are for 2015-16 (April 2015 – March 2016) and 2016-17 (April 2016 – March 2017).

Notes:

- Bed days relating to all admissions of people with diabetes in the time period are counted, including multiple admissions by the same person.

- People with diabetes who have not been admitted to hospital during the time period are not considered within these data.

- In 2015-16, 82.4% of all general practitioner practices in England and Wales participated in the audit (95.3% in 2016-17).

- Data for 2017-18 is likely to be available in late 2018.