Diabetes integrated shared care scheme

Location: King’s College London
Grantholder: Dr Richard Jones, Senior Lecturer, King’s College London
Award: £518,000
Start date: 01/04/2001

Project intentions:
To provide a structured integration between primary and specialist diabetes services in North Lambeth and evaluate the impact.

Project outputs:

• A full-time dedicated diabetes specialist nurse and a dietician and podiatrist (both part-time) were appointed to support general practices participating in the project in delivering patient care.
• Local clinical guidelines were drawn up.
• Regular diabetes training events were held.
• Primary care professionals’ satisfaction with access, communication and management advice from the diabetes team Primary Health Care Research and Development, 2006, 7, 13-17
• The evaluation itself is available as follows: Sharing specialist skills for diabetes in an inner city: A comparison of two primary care organisations over 4 years Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2006, 12, 5, 583 – 590.

Reported benefits
• The evaluation showed that the activities described above were successful at improving access to specialist advice and communication between primary and secondary care.
• At the end of the charitable funding period, Lambeth PCT picked up the costs of the three posts described above and the project was extended to the whole of the borough.
• The momentum of the project has been reinforced and maintained by the introduction of the Quality and Outcomes Framework.