National Diabetes Inpatient Audit 2019 - Hospital Characteristics Form Guidance

For audit leads

You should have received your log-in details for the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) platform. If you have not received these, then please email [email protected].

The Hospital Characteristics form can start to be completed as soon as you have downloaded it from the SDCS system.

Once you are logged on, you can download the Excel form template, complete your sections and circulate to colleagues via email to help with completion (similar to the previous audit years’ method).

This new electronic format allows data to be validated before you upload your final submission onto the SDCS system.

For all staff

Welcome to another year using the electronic Hospital Characteristics form.

You need to provide your answers in the response boxes next to the questions. The format retains the radio button we successfully trialled last year. Please click on the button next to your answer.

Not every question has guidance notes. We have only provided these where we felt these are needed. If you need further guidance, please email [email protected].

Remember to save the form to your computer after completing any questions and before emailing it onto other colleagues to complete their sections.

You can email the form to different members of staff to complete the necessary sections. The form should be returned to the Audit lead to coordinate and submit the completed form via the SDCS system by Friday 11 October 2019.

The SDCS Collections team will assist you with your submission if the form doesn’t pass all the validation checks upon file upload onto the SDCS portal.

Question 1. Guidance notes

Question 1. On the day of the audit how many occupied beds were there in your hospital? (Minus the excluded wards)

Excluded wards are as follows:
• paediatric
• obstetric
• A&E
• day case ward
• day surgery unit patients
• observation ward (if patients have been admitted for less than 24 hours)
• surgical short stay unit

Question 2. Guidance notes

Question 2. For each healthcare profession, please provide the Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) spent on inpatient diabetes care.

When providing the Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) spent on inpatient diabetes care:

• please provide information for all healthcare professions
• the WTE needs to represent the total time spent weekly, rounded to 2 decimal places
• inpatient diabetes care to include clinical time and admin time

Diabetes Specialist Nurses definition:

Diabetes specialist nurses can be generally divided into dedicated inpatient specialist nurses, general diabetes specialist nurses (mainly outpatients) and community diabetes specialist nurses. The latter are unlikely to be involved in inpatient work and therefore do not form part of this questionnaire.

For Diabetes Consultants, please document time spent on diabetes inpatient care. This should include:

• diabetes referrals
• specific diabetes ward rounds
• care of diabetes on general medical and post take ward rounds

1 WTE = 37.5 hours
that is, each day on diabetes care = 0.2 WTE,
each half day = 0.1 WTE,
each hour = 0.0267 WTE.

Thus in a consultant team:

• Five half day inpatient sessions a week = 0.1 x 5 = 0.5 WTE
• 12 diabetes referrals/week each of 20 minutes = 4 hour x 0.0267 = 0.1067 WTE = 0.11 WTE rounded
• 1 diabetes MDT foot ward round (3.75 hours) = 0.10 WTE
• It is assumed that 20% of inpatients have diabetes. Thus, if your service provides 30 hours of general medical and post take ward round care this would equate to 6 hours of diabetes care x 0.0267 = 0.16 WTE

Question 4. Guidance notes

Question 4. Does your hospital provide access to a Diabetes Physician 7 days a week (this could include partial cover at the weekends)?

‘Access’ includes both face-to-face and access by phone.

Question 8. Guidance notes

Question 8. Is there a team of individuals who are responsible for organising perioperative diabetes care?
(All team aspects must be present – including an anaesthetic lead, and members from surgical, pre-assessment, recovery, surgical ward nurses and diabetes specialists as outlined in the 2018 NCEPOD report)

There was debate about splitting this into 6 parts, one for each team area. To keep the questionnaire succinct it was decided to record whether a full team was available or not.

Question 10b. Guidance notes

Question 10b. What is that target value for the majority of patients?

Please enter a figure to one decimal place for example, 4.5 or 4.0

Question 17. Guidance notes

Question 17. Is there an established Multi-disciplinary Diabetic Foot care Team (MDFT)?

Multidisciplinary Diabetes Foot Care Team (MDFT) definition:

A multidisciplinary diabetes foot care team is defined as a team consisting of at least a diabetologist, a podiatrist with skills in managing the diabetic foot and a surgeon (general, orthopaedic or vascular surgeon). These members must be in weekly contact to discuss patient care.

If you have any questions about the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit please contact us on 0300 303 5678 or email [email protected].

Finally, thank you for your support in delivering the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit. The audit would not be successful without your help.