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SCOTTISH DIABETES SURVEY 2002
FOREWORD
The challenge for NHS Scotland is to provide high quality diabetes care to all patients with diabetes. The SIGN guidelines have clearly documented the evidence base for good clinical care. Improved outcomes for patients with diabetes can be achieved by lifestyle modification and other interventions to lower raised blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol. These interventions, together with effective screening programmes will have a major impact on reducing coronary heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and visual impairment in people with diabetes. This challenge needs to be met not only for the estimated 153,000 patients who currently have diabetes, but also for the people developing diabetes in the future; it is estimated that the number of people with diabetes will double within the next 10 to 15 years.
With publication of the
Scottish Diabetes Framework and more recently
HDL(2002)81 (Developing services for people with diabetes), the Scottish Executive has demonstrated its commitment to improving the health of people with diabetes. One of the key steps in achieving improved care is to improve the quality and availability of data by establishing regional clinical information systems that support high quality clinical care. The creation of an accurate picture of diabetes care at regional and national level presents a considerable challenge.
There is no doubt that in the absence of effective IT to support clinical care, the task of compiling data is time consuming and difficult. The sometimes heroic efforts of clinical and administrative staff to collate the data necessary for the Diabetes Survey submission is both the reason why Scotland has been able to make such progress with diabetes register development and a testament to the enthusiasm and commitment amongst the diabetes community to improve diabetes care in Scotland. The implementation of the SCI-DC clinical and network systems in each NHS Board area will greatly reduce the effort involved in data collection and analysis. The burden of data collection will continue until SCI-DC is implemented. This will not be wasted effort however, if the systems used to collect the information in each area is designed with SCI-DC in mind. The use of up to date information collected for the survey to populate the SCI-DC system will expedite and ease implementation of this new system.
On behalf of the Monitoring Group I would like to thank all those who have helped to make this report possible. I would like particularly to thank David Cline the Secretary of the Group who has worked very hard to prepare this report and Professor Andrew Morris who chaired the Scottish Diabetes Survey Monitoring Group until his appointment as Chairman of the Scottish Diabetes Group in March 2002. I have greatly appreciated their continuing support and advice.
Dr John McKnight
On behalf of the Scottish Diabetes Survey Monitoring Group
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