The NHS’s CEO Simon Stevens announced at the Diabetes UK Professional Conference held last week in London that £40m will be available for the second year of transformation funding. Chris Askew, Chief Executive of Diabetes UK commented, “We’d hoped to have confirmation that this funding would continue, and enable local services to continue making improvements to the care they provide, so today’s announcement is great news for people living with diabetes. This news means that local areas can continue building on their early progress using transformation funding to improve their services. In addition to the direct benefit to people with diabetes, improving these services will also make the NHS more sustainable in the long run.”
The NHS Shared Planning Guidance for 2017-2019 set out transformation funding for supporting improvement in the treatment and care of people with diabetes. Around £44 million of transformation funding will be used to improve treatment and care for the 2.8 million adults and children diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. This will include:
• increasing uptake of structured education
• improving achievement of the NICE recommended treatment targets (HbA1c, blood pressure and cholesterol for adults, HbA1c only for children)
• reducing the number of amputations by improving access to multi-disciplinary foot care teams
• reducing lengths of hospital stays by improving access to specialist inpatient support
Speaking at the event Simon Stevens called Dr Partha Kar, NHS England Associate National Clinical Director for Diabetes, and Jonathan Valabhji, Consultant Diabetologist at Imperial College, on stage to sit next to him, then they took questions from the audience. Kar described this as, “A very clear signal of intent- as well as support if there ever was one.” It also showed the relationship these members of the NHS diabetes team shares with the top tiers of the NHS.
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