National Diabetes Audit (Core Audit)

NHS England has been directed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to establish and operate a system for the collection and analysis of the National Diabetes Audit (NDA) including the National Diabetes Audit Core Audit, which is part of the NDA programme of clinical audits.

People with diabetes should receive annual care checks each year and should be achieving a target for their blood glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure values; these annual checks and targets are outlined in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Clinical Guidelines and Quality Standards.

The main National Diabetes Audit, known as the Core Audit, collects information from general practices and specialist diabetes out-patient services to look at whether people with diabetes are:

• receiving their annual care checks
• achieving their treatment targets
• achieving expected health outcomes
• being offered and attending structured education

From 2023, NDA Core Audit has been extended to include specialist monogenic diabetes data for England from the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Monogenic diabetes data (diagnostic codes generated from the UK NHS diagnostic testing service for monogenic diabetes hosted by the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) will be linked to the NDA to allow care process and treatment outcomes from the audit to be used to assess the care of people with monogenic diabetes.

NHS England will publish the audit outputs in the form of interactive dashboards; annual state of the nation summary reports; bespoke reporting tailored to different audiences (including commissioning bodies, people with diabetes and clinicians) and summary infographics. 

This Notice is served on:

• general practices in England
• specialist out-patient diabetes services in England that deliver diabetes care
• South West Genomic Laboratory Hub on behalf of the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (in relation to monogenic diabetes data)
• NHS funded diabetic eye screening services in England
• NHS funded services delivering diabetes structured patient education

The NDA (Core Audit) collects information for a 15-month audit period covering 1 January to 31 March the following year.

The data is extracted from general practices on a quarterly basis via GPES. Indicative timings for extractions are:

• August: collection of data from January to June
• November: collection of data from January to September
• February: collection of data from January to December
• May: collection of full audit year data

Monogenic diabetes data collection from the South West Genomic Laboratory Hub will also follow the above frequency and timeline.

For specialist diabetes out-patient services the collection utilises the Clinical Audit Platform’s Data Landing portal (registration is required). Data can be submitted at any time throughout the audit year but is extracted for inclusion in the audit outputs annually. 

General practices and specialist diabetes out-patient services are notified directly of the collection periods and timeframes and these will also be advertised on the NDA (Core Audit) collection webpage.

Update: 1 November 2023 - Version 4.0 of this Notice issued both to support the 2023 data collection and to reflect the legal and organisational changes which came into effect on 1 February 2023.

Update: 7 July 2021 - Version 3.0 issued with updates to the Dissemination and Transparency sections to reflect current legislation; removal of obsolete timeframes to reflect ongoing continuation of collection.

Update: June 2019 - Version 2.0 issued with updates to timeframes of collection.

June 2017 - Version 1.0 issued to reflect NHS Digital as the collecting organisation.