Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the relationship between diabetes complications and unplanned hospital emergency admissions; and if he will make a statement.

The following table, taken from the National Diabetes Audit 2012-13, Report 2: Complications and Mortality, shows the total number of emergency hospital finished consultant episodes (FCE) and National Diabetes Audit (NDA) related emergency hospital FCEs in England and Wales from 2012-13.

Notes:

A Finished Consultant Episode (FCE) is the time a patient spends in the continuous care of one consultant. If a patient transfers from one consultant to another within a single hospital provider spell, for example moves to a ward with a specific speciality and is treated by a new consultant, one Consultant Episode will end and another one begin. So patients may have more than one finished consultant episode during a single hospital stay.

1. HES/PEDW FCE are all episodes for the relevant complication between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013. This may include multiple episodes for one patient.

2. NDA episodes are from all patients registered with general practitioner (GP) practices that participated in the audit in the audit period 2011-12, please bear in mind that participation for the 2011-12 audit was 87.9 per cent of all eligible GP practices and there was a large variation across clinical commissioning groups and local health boards.

It shows that, with the exception of stroke, people with diabetes account for at least one fifth (and up to three fifths) of all emergency episodes for each of the complications.

There is sound evidence that achieving National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended diabetes treatment targets reduces complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, amputation and premature death. Improving the delivery of these continues to be important in ensuring that people with diabetes receive the best possible care and so reduce their risk of developing complications.

Furthermore, NHS England have prioritised prevention of diabetes and are working together with Public Health England and Diabetes UK to establish a national diabetes prevention programme, making us the first country to implement such a programme at scale, modelled on national and international proven experience. This should help reduce people’s risk of developing diabetes and therefore subsequently requiring hospital treatment for complications from the disease.