Diabetes integration is the whole health community joining in partnership to own the health outcomes of patients with diabetes in their local area.
Providing better-integrated diabetes care has been shown to improve patient experience, quality of clinical care and reduce hospital admissions for vulnerable patients. The next steps for policy makers will include removing the cultural divide between different providers and setting realistic objectives for the delivery of integrated care. There will be a need to share best practice which provides a comprehensive approach to providing integrated diabetes care and avoid the piecemeal fragmentation which is potentially an inherent feature of the competition and choice policy.
The full document (produced in conjunction with NHS Diabetes, Department of Health and other partners) provides clinical commissioning groups with valuable information on the need and the importance of commissioning integrated care for patients, service users and their carers.
Download the full position statement, Best practice for commissioning diabetes services: An integrated care framework (PDF, 1MB)