Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to address local variations in the quality of care for diabetes patients.

Over recent years, the quality of NHS services for people with or at risk of diabetes has improved and, as a result, so have health and care outcomes. The latest data on diabetes care shows a 60% completion rate of all the eight measurable National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended care processes for diabetes. Whilst the Quality and Outcomes Framework incentivises general practitioners to deliver these processes for everyone over 17 with diabetes, they are not mandatory as there may be good clinical reasons for not conducting them on every patient.

The Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) outcomes indicator set provides clear, comparative information for CCGs, health and wellbeing boards, local authorities, patients and the public about the quality of health services commissioned by CCGs and the associated health outcomes. The indicators are useful for CCGs and health and wellbeing boards in identifying local priorities for quality improvement and to demonstrate progress that local health systems are making on outcomes. Reviewing progress against these indicators, which include the number of people with diabetes who have received the nine care processes annually, forms part of NHS England's on-going assurance of CCGs. Performance against the outcomes indicator set can also be used as part of CCGs local accountability to their boards and to health and wellbeing boards.

In addition, in October 2014, Public Health England published Healthier Lives: Diabetes, a tool which provides information on the variation in the treatment of diabetes at a local level. Through sector led improvement, the tool aims to drive improvements in diabetes care and iron out variation.

We recognise that there is still more to do and so improving the delivery of the diabetes care processes and achievement of recommended diabetes treatment targets continues to be important in ensuring that people with diabetes receive the best possible care.