Amended diabetes metrics on the Model Health System published by GIRFT

Feedback from clinical teams have triggered GIRFT to update its metrics for diabetes on the Model Health System (MHS).

Since 2022, the diabetes compartment of the programme has been available, with topics covering data for diabetes care, amputations, surgical care and other hospital-wide metrics for inpatients with diabetes.

After getting feedback from staff at GIRFT’s gateway review visits and Further Faster meetings, the compartment has now been refreshed and expanded.

The changes will include hypoglycaemia metrics being split by age and also primary/secondary diagnosis, as well as a revamp of the metrics for amputations.

In addition, the update will see a new section of lower limb angioplasty metrics and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) metrics being split by age and also primary/secondary diagnosis.

To access data for your unit, log in to https://model.nhs.uk/ and navigate to ‘acute hospital services’ > diabetes > GIRFT metrics.

Data on the MHS enables NHS trusts and systems to understand how they care for people living with diabetes while in hospital, and supports them to target improvements accordingly.

The GIRFT compartment for diabetes gives clinical teams and managers access to their data on such metrics as length of stay (LoS) for people admitted for hypo- and hyperglycaemia, the number of patients with diabetes readmitted after surgery, or length of stay for individuals with diabetes who need a major amputation.

In many cases, comparative data for people without diabetes is also provided to allow an understanding of how the presence of diabetes affects patient outcomes.

Professor Gerry Rayman, GIRFT joint clinical lead for diabetes, said: “We are proud to have such a comprehensive data set available to MHS users, and to see on our visits how that data is being used by teams to make adjustments and improvements to patient care, but we also want to evolve and develop the metrics over time to be of most use.

“I am grateful to our analysts, who have been key in supporting us to produce these new metrics.”

He added: “Our colleagues in departments across England told us which developments they’d find most helpful, and we’ve listened.

“I’d urge everyone working with patients living with diabetes to sign up for Model Health System and tap into this important resource.”