Use our Diabetes Watch online tool to find out how good your local diabetes services are compared to the national average.
Using data from national audits, surveys and other sources in England, Scotland and Wales, the tool shows you how the care and checks that form your 15 healthcare essentials are being provided in your health areas.
For example, you could see that, for your local health area, 95% of people have had their HbA1c recorded in the last year, against a national figure of 91%, indicating that performance for that healthcare essential is better than the national average.
Campaigning for the care you should receive
If you are not getting the care you should be, you can raise this with your healthcare team or your local health service providers.
We’ve provided some links in the tool for more information, and so you can send us your views about the care you receive – this is important, as the data only shows what is in place. We want to hear about your experiences of using the services and your feedback on the quality of care you are getting.
You can also find out how you can join us to take action, by becoming a Diabetes Voice, supporting our campaigns, becoming a member of Diabetes UK, or by helping us by fundraising or volunteering.
The data we use
The data behind the tool comes from the National Diabetes Audit and DiabetesE in England and Wales, and the Scottish Diabetes Survey.
These are the largest and most comprehensive audits of their kind and provide us with the most current data on diabetes.
The data and information is based on activity in the previous year from Primary Care Trusts in England, Local Health Boards in Wales and NHS Boards in Scotland. There is currently no data available for Northern Ireland, but we are working to try to make sure that this is recorded in future.
The Diabetes Watch online tool will be updated to take into account changes to the way health services are organised, and to reflect the latest data. For example, in 2013, the new NHS systems in England will come into force, and Primary Care Trusts will be replaced by Clinical Commissioning Groups.
In the future, we aim to make use of data that shows performance at the GP practice level, as it becomes available, so that you can see the quality of care provided by your local surgery.
Some of the data collected about diabetes care and services is patchy and, in some cases, it is not collected at all. We’ve highlighted this so that you can join us to call for better data about these key areas of care, such as access to emotional and psychological support or personalised care planning.
For the data about England, each of the 15 healthcare essentials is colour coded to show whether for that measure the PCT falls into the top 25% (green), middle 50% (amber) or lower 25% (red) for performance when compared to the England average figure.