SOMERSET medical experts have been praised for their work helping improve treatment for diabetes.

Staff at the Somerset NHS Foundation Trust have been involved in a national initiative that aims to improve services across the country.

Consultant endocrinologist Dr Alex Bickerton and diabetes nurses Ruth Hammond and Emily Harrod took part from Yeovil Hospital, while consultant endocrinologist Dr Isy Douek represented the diabetes service at Musgrove Park Hospital.

Emily said: “The main aim of this National Diabetes Audit (NDA) Quality Improvement Collaborative (QIC) was to address the significant gaps in the use of insulin pumps among individuals with type 1 diabetes.

“Published data shows that around 90,000 people in England and Wales with blood glucose (HbA1c) levels greater than 69 mmol/mol are not using insulin pumps, which highlights the inequalities based on the person’s location, gender, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

“To tackle this issue, specialist teams set up a monthly meeting to discuss and implement quality improvement strategies.

“Our primary objective at Yeovil Hospital was to enhance data collection, so we could identify patients eligible for insulin pump therapy, as well as to establish a streamlined pathway for their treatment.

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“At the time, we were anticipating a technology appraisal from NHS England, which outlines a five-year plan for introducing hybrid closed loop systems – integrating insulin pumps with continuous glucose monitoring – for eligible patients.

“The NDA QIC initiative made a huge difference in helping us to refine our service, ensuring that we can offer advanced technology to patients in a structured and equitable manner.

“This approach, alongside the technology appraisal, increased the number of individuals using this technology, resulting in improved diabetes management and overall wellbeing.”

Dr Douek said being part of the project “enabled us to review our service at Musgrove Park Hosptial”.

“We quickly realised that our diabetes nurses and dietitians were spending a lot of time on administration and technical support,” he went on.

“This led to us appointing a diabetes support worker, which has made a huge difference to both patients and the team, and we were also able to review our pump pathway and implement a hybrid closed loop pathway.

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“The new NICE technology appraisal requires much more data collection and quarterly uploads centrally, to ensure that patient funding continues. We therefore also updated a database for use across both our acute hospitals to facilitate this.

“We also received a commendation from the national quality improvement team for our work to improve the care of people living with diabetes, something we’re really proud of.”

Diabetes UK also thanked the trust for taking part in the qualitive improvement collaborative programme.

Michael Sykes, the National Diabetes Audit quality improvement lead, added: “We highly commend your team for collaborating, sharing and supporting people living with diabetes.”