Better coordinated diabetes care could free up many hospital beds

A new report, titled: Admissions avoidance and diabetes, shows that there over 600,000 days in hospital for people with diabetes could be avoided.
The report has been put together through a collaboration between diabetes charity Diabetes UK and the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists. The report makes a strong case for ensuring people with diabetes receive better coordinated care which would improve care for patients whilst reducing the costs associated with longer and more frequent hospital stays.
Excess bed days are estimated to cost £573 million a year, which represents between 4% and 5% of the NHS’s diabetes budget and is significantly more than the cost of test strip prescriptions which are estimated as costing the NHS around £150 million.
The report highlights the fact that there is a wide variation between the numbers of hospital days needed for people with diabetes across different parts of the country. This suggests that some areas of the UK are better set up to reduce diabetes complications and to handle hospital stays efficiently.
Chief Executive of Diabetes UK Barbara Young points out that more needs to be done to ensuring people with diabetes receive structured diabetes education, care planning and access to specialist teams when they are admitted to hospital.
Many of the hospital admissions for diabetes are a result of diabetic complications which could be avoided through wider delivery of diabetes education together with better access to systems, such as blood glucose testing and insulin pumps, which help people to better manage their diabetes.