Diabetes

Diabetes is a chronic condition affecting over 2 million people in England and Wales. In the UK the number of people diagnosed with diabetes is 2.3 million.

It is caused by an inability to use or produce the hormone insulin and leads to a rise in blood glucose. If blood glucose levels are not kept within normal limits, patients risk developing long term complications including blindness (retinopathy), lower limb amputations, renal failure (dialysis/transplant), heart disease and strokes.

The national diabetes audit (NDA) is considered to be the largest annual clinical audit in the world. It provides an infrastructure for the collation, analysis, benchmarking and feedback of local clinical data to support effective clinical audit across the NHS.

Quality information is vital to the success of organisations implementing the Diabetes National Service Framework (NSF) and key to improving services for people with diabetes. The NDA supports the implementation of the diabetes NSF and aims to improve the quality of patient care by enabling NHS organisations to:

compare the processes and outcomes of care with similar NHS organisations
identify and share good practice
identify gaps or shortfalls in commissioning services
support identification of progress in meeting Diabetes NSF and NICE guidelines
provide a local health economy view of care and outcomes where primary and secondary care organisations actively participate.

Aims of the audit

The national diabetes audit (NDA) looks at four key areas and answers four key questions based on the diabetes national service framework:

is everyone with diabetes diagnosed and recorded on a practice diabetes register?
for people with diabetes, what is the annual rate of specific complications?
what proportion of people with diabetes receive key process of diabetes care?
what proportion of people with diabetes achieve treatment targets?