HEY I Know Diabetes!

Abstract

FACT: One in six patients in hospital has diabetes.
Innovative solutions to the way we deliver urgent care and indeed prevent admissions is imperative as we are an ageing population that suffers from a variety of chronic diseases. Diabetes is no exception. The scale and cost of diabetes hospital admissions is enormous. There are currently 3 million people living with diabetes in the UK, and it is estimated that this number will rise by about 25% over the next 10 years. In addition to the daily challenges of living with diabetes it is a condition associated with an almost doubling of the risk of hospitalisation when compared to someone without diabetes1. Each year there are approximately 1 million admissions to hospital where diabetes appears as a diagnosis, costing an estimated £2.51billion (2009/2010 data)2. Of these admissions, about 250,000 are in excess of the numbers expected for an age adjusted population without diabetes. The estimated cost to the NHS of these excess diabetes admissions is in the region of £686 million each year, notwithstanding the personal cost to the individual. It is also worth noting that there is substantial variability between clinical commissioning groups in England and Acute Trusts in diabetes admission rates which cannot be
explained by variations in diabetes prevalence alone suggesting that the pathways of care, or perhaps their absence, for people with diabetes must in some way be contributing to this unacceptable variability.