WE are stepping up our work exploring new ways of improving the delivery of diabetes services across primary care – bringing your fresh ideas and innovation to the fore. We hope to harness the pool of expertise that exists among us by inviting GPs, nurses and practice managers with a specialism in the condition to join a BCA Diabetes Working Group. You will work alongside the wider Bradford Provider Alliance to shape improvements for patients as they progress through the health and care system – but it’s important we look at the primary care element as soon as possible. For more details about the group’s objectives, and how you can apply to join it or send in your suggestions.
MANY of you will recall that the ambition from the CCG for diabetes was to deliver a new outcome-based integrated diabetic service for Bradford, and for this to be launched from April 2017.
Whilst a lot of progress on developing a new model has been made over the last 18 months, the system is not yet at a point to define exactly how this will look in terms of clinical objectives and activities.
Therefore we have put in place temporary extensions to the existing level 2 diabetic clinics provided by 27 BCA members currently for 2017/18.
It is inevitable that the Bradford Provider Alliance (BPA) diabetes delivery group will come up with changes to the way in which we deliver community-based diabetic services – both in the cohort of patients that are being seen and the work that we are doing with them.
This new community-based delivery will continue to be very reliant on the existing level 2 clinicians utilising their skills – albeit in a different setting with some changed outcomes being worked towards.
Indeed there is a desire to open this out to include a broader range of GPs and BCA members.
In parallel to this, we are keen to start that process of change by starting to trial some of the new ideas and look at how we can use the current funding available (and sadly there is currently limited scope to drastically improve this, though we are working hard to try!).
We would like to create a model that uses some of this resource to support GP practices with some of the work that is done as part of core GP work (formerly known as level 1) in a more holistic diabetic service that helps prevent the progression of the disease.
So alongside the BPA Diabetes Delivery Group we are setting up our own BCA group to develop some new ideas that we can start to pilot within general practice and to consider how we should contract for those services in the future.
We are looking for GP, nurse and practice manager volunteers to join a group to develop some new ideas – ideally a mix of people with a passion and specialism in diabetes and ideas about how things could be different!
We’re also looking for a mix of level 1 and level 2/3 providers, small practices and larger ones. Time for attending these meetings will be funded by BCA.
If you are interested in joining this group please can you email our administrator martin.myers@bradford.nhs.uk to find out more.
