Innovation Award

Leicester Diabetes Centre

The Leicester Diabetes Centre offer courses in many different areas which ensures attending a DESMOND course is accessible for the patients. The team receive over 400 referrals each month and deliver up to 22 courses per month, which include DESMOND BME courses, Walking Away from Diabetes and A Safer Ramadan.

They have worked hard to achieve a reputation in dealing efficiently with patients as their priority is patient wellbeing. As a team they support each other to ensure consistency in their delivery of service, which enables them to discuss with each other ideas on how to improve process and practices within the office.

They have introduced a bespoke DESMOND database, which has helped make it easier to process patient data and retrieve information vital to commissions. Their friendly working environment ensures they function effectively and meet their commitments. The team say they are “proud” of how they run the DESMOND service to such a large amount of people.

Surrey Downs Diabetes Service

A new diabetes service, the Surrey Downs team is made up of experienced DESMOND Educators who are helping to train up new members.

The adaptable team are proud of the fact they have taught in all environments, including church halls, education centres and medical centres. They say they can work wherever there’s an empty room, which is why they always arrive laden with all the resources they could possibly need to help boost inspiration wherever they are.

As a team they run courses in six different areas across Surrey including Tadworth, Leatherhead, Dorking and Cheam. They are an enthusiastic team who enjoy working with all the different patients they see from all walks of life, nationalities, ages and backgrounds. Very often they arrive as strangers and leave as friends, which the team are proud of. Through the guidance offered from the Surrey Downs team, the participants very quickly learn to support each other.

London Northwest Healthcare NHS Trust

A forward thinking integrated diabetes team which delivers specialist diabetes care in the community. The team seamlessly integrate with primary care and facilitate the transfer of bidirectional patient flow between primary and secondary care.

The team, which is made up of 11 DESMOND Educators, has an estimated 25,000 patients in Brent. Following an audit last year, they discovered that the invitation to appointment rate was just under 50% with a high non-attendance rate crossing 31%. This affected their efficiency so they put in processes to improve services. A year later and they have seen an improvement in all areas including number of referrals, invitation to appointment conversions and total number of attendees.

Their plans for the future include delivering DESMOND in different languages like Punjabi, Gujarati and Tamil and reaching out to non-responders.