The data you will want to audit will depend very much on what your commissioners want to know (which would be reflected in the service specification), as well as anything additional your team wishes to report on, and anything that your referrers may wish to know. The service specification will state the requirements for the data to be collected and also for its safe management.

We have included a suggested dataset below. From experience, capturing this data at baseline via the initial referral and then collecting some follow-up data as detailed below works well. Using your local electronic education administration system to store and, if possible, draw down the data (specifically the biomedical markers) from local healthcare electronic systems (such as SYSTM1 or EMIS) can help reduce the manpower required to complete this task.

Patient unique identifier (NHS number or equivalent)
Name (include title)
Address (include postcode)
Date of birth
Gender
Ethnicity
Contact numbers
Referral date
Referral source (self/HCP)
GP practice name and postcode
Acceptance of referral (yes/no)
If decline, record reason
Contact with patient (date)
Course date agreed (date)
Contacted before course as a reminder (yes/no)
Biomedical markers at baseline
HbA1c
Blood pressure
Cholesterol (total/LDL/HDL)
Weight
Waist measurement
If smoker (yes/no)
Biomedical markers at 6 months
Biomedical markers at 12 months
Biomedical markers at 18 months
Evaluation form received (date)
Communication back to GP on outcome (date) - including in this the type of education received (group / digital)

Your commissioner will advise on the frequency and method of reporting required. It is good practice to ensure you have all reports prepared one week in advance of any submissions. This will allow you to ensure that you have the necessary time to share within your team for comments before submitting.

Include data in tables, pie charts and graphs to bring the data to life and draw attention to figures of improvement. If you have MyDESMOND a great visual report is available in the report tab.

You may also wish to provide short reports/newsletters to referring practices to keep them abreast of local figures, including comparison against other referring practices, e.g. number of referrals received, number of attendees per practice, number of patients newly diagnosed, DNA/Decline rates, and patient satisfaction. If you have MyDESMOND you can even download practice specific reports which you could include.

In addition to local audits, you will need to provide data to the National Diabetes Audit (NDA), run by NHS Digital in partnership with Diabetes UK and supported by Public Health England. More information about the audit can be found here.

In order to ease extraction of auditable data, ensure the use of correct coding within the GP clinical system. Using the right read code will aid this process; below is an extract from https://diabetes-resources-production.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/diabetes-storage/2017-08/Std_Approach_Guide_v10.pdf

The above code align very nicely to the traditional group education offer. If you have patients who have only accessed MyDESMOND as their diabetes education currently you will also have to use the codes above. We advise giving patients four weeks from the day you add their details to MyDESMOND - if after four weeks they have still not activated then you can delete the patients details from MyDESMOND and discharge them to GP with a DNA code. If they register their account and begin using the programme you can discharge them to the GP with an attended code. If they register and meet the minimal completer criteria of ‘interacts with at least one feature once a week for four weeks’, then these users can be marked as completed. Exactly how you want to do this can vary locally. Please contact Alison at DESMOND Head Office (alison.northern@uhl-tr.nhs.uk) if you would like to discuss further.

Collect and report audit data