National Diabetes Audit Specification Development and Engagement

4 May 2021: The online engagement exercise as part of this work is currently live and available here. Submissions will be accepted until Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 5pm.

The National Diabetes Audit (NDA) is a national clinical audit that measures the effectiveness of diabetes healthcare against clinical guidelines and quality standards in England and Wales.

The contractual arrangements under which the NDA is delivered end in June 2022. HQIP is preparing a new NDA specification and package of work and is inviting people affected by diabetes and professionals to review and influence the proposed specification.

The specification is a document that describes how the NDA will be delivered, what it will do and what it will produce.

What does HQIP plan to do?

We will develop a specification which will set out how the NDA will be delivered, what it will do and what it will produce from 2022 onwards. We then plan to hold a range of engagement activities in Spring 2021 to gather feedback about the specification and its alignment with clinical priorities in diabetes care.

These engagement activities will include:

Organisations will be limited to one response per organisation.

Groups we would like to engage with include (but are not limited to):

  • Charities
  • People affected by diabetes
  • Community groups
  • Royal Colleges
  • Professional societies
  • Regulators
  • Commissioners
  • Providers of healthcare
  • Organisations responsible for developing clinical and professional standards of best practice
  • National clinical audit representatives and advisors

Get in touch to how your group or organisation can take part by emailing project manager Oliver Potter or, if you’re a patient or patient representative, by emailing patient and public involvement lead Kim Rezel.

How will we work?

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project will be designed to run virtually using video conferencing software (either Zoom or Microsoft Teams). There will be no in-person face-to-face engagement.

We will be holding a patient focus group in June 2021 at the following time:

  1. Thursday 17 June 2021, between 10am – 12pm 

If you would like to attend this session, please contact Kim Rezel, our patient and public involvement lead, for further details.

What will HQIP do with the feedback and comments received?

We will review all feedback received and consider, together with NHS England, appropriate amendments to the NDA specification. NHS England will then formally approve the final specification. Where possible, we will give high-level feedback about the outcome of this engagement exercise.

Who will be involved?

The project will be delivered by HQIP, acting on behalf of NHS England. The team is:

  • Dr. Sasha Hewitt, project lead
  • Kim Rezel, patient and public involvement lead
  • Oliver Potter, project manager
  • HQIP communications lead

Background 

The NDA is delivered by NHS Digital in partnership with Diabetes UK. It is one topic, which is part of the much larger National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP) funded by NHS England and Welsh Government.

The NDA was originally established in 2003 and since 2017, NHS England has used statutory powers to instruct NHS Digital to establish and operate a system for the collection and analysis of the NDA. This is known as a Direction (under section 254 of the Health and Social Care Act) and means that GP practices and specialist services are legally required to supply the relevant data. NHS England is the commissioner for the NDA and is assisted by HQIP who contract manages the NDA on their behalf.