Tackling inequalities in diabetes care: a data-led approach from Barking and Dagenham CCG.

Abstract

The NHS was set up as an equitable healthcare system, free at the point of delivery and equally accessible. The fundamental principle behind the health service was that high-quality health care should be available to all. However, people living in the poorest areas of England are still dying earlier and spending more of their lives living with disability; the variability in health care and outcomes is especially evident in relation to the outcomes of long-term conditions like diabetes. The prevalence of long-term conditions increases incrementally with increasing levels of deprivation, but the quality of care is seen to deteriorate.1 The 2011 Atlas of Variation shows the marked variation in quality of care provision — for example, the percentage of people with type 2 diabetes receiving all nine processes of care for diabetes ranged from 7% to 71.4%.2 Socioeconomic deprivation …