The following article was written by Chris Rennard and published today on the Liberal Democrat Voice Website.

On Tuesday, I helped to launch a report ‘Keeping People with Diabetes out of Hospital‘. As a person with diabetes, I know only too well the pressure that our diabetes care services are under.

Whether I’m speaking to my Diabetes Specialist Nurse, to my consultant, or to my colleagues in Westminster, it is clear that the ‘diabetes epidemic’ is increasingly being recognised as of major concern. Of the 2.9 million people in the UK living with diabetes, a worrying proportion will suffer additional complications and will require hospital care. In the last year alone, another 130,000 people have been diagnosed with diabetes, and it is likely that they were already experiencing diabetes-related complications at the time of diagnosis.

The Primary Care Diabetes Society (PDCS) (with support from healthcare company Sanofi) recently carried out an extensive piece of research looking specifically at why people with diabetes end up in hospital and how it can be avoided.

I had the pleasure of chairing the working group of clinical experts behind the report, and I was both concerned and impressed in equal measure. My concern came when the extent of the challenge we face became even clearer — yet I was singularly impressed by the innovation and creativity demonstrated by the diabetes clinical community in tackling this problem head on.

Baroness (Barbara) Young, Chief Executive of Diabetes UK, spoke just last week on the alarming rise in the prevalence of diabetes, issuing this warning: “the time for action is now. We must reverse this trend if more people are not going to suffer unnecessarily and if diabetes is not going to bankrupt the NHS”.

She is of course, absolutely right. The human cost and the cost to the NHS of diabetes and its related complications is indeed staggering -– with some reports suggesting that it now accounts for 10% of the NHS budget.

Diabetes, by its very nature, is a complex condition and treatment spans the entire NHS care pathway. As such there are many costs attributed to it, particularly when you take into consideration the multiple complications that it can cause, including blindness, amputation, kidney failure, heart attack and stroke. More often than not these additional complications will result in a person being admitted into hospital — a medical intervention that places strain on the patient, and on the public purse.

In our assessment of current clinical practices, it became clear that, across the continuum of care, there are many gaps through which a patient can fall — managing their diabetes poorly and suffering complications, or having their condition diagnosed too late.

The socio-economic circumstances of a person with diabetes can also have a considerable impact on their access to care and the way in which they manage, or mismanage, their condition. The Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, older people, children and young people, and those from deprived socio-economic backgrounds are all susceptible to mismanagement, complications and the subsequent reliance on costly acute care services.

As with many organisational challenges, much of this comes down to communication and access to information.

The working group expressed their frustration at the way in which patient information is shared, or indeed not shared. To ensure that a patient has access to the appropriate treatment and specialist care it is vital that their doctors and nurses are fully informed as to their condition and medication. Whilst the general patient population may expect it, it is unfortunately not always the case. Dialogue between health care professionals across the entire NHS therefore must be multidirectional, open and fluid as standard.

Most importantly, this research shines a light on the value of sharing good practice.

There is a plethora of initiatives taking place across the NHS that are looking to keep people with diabetes in control and out of hospital. This can be as simple as putting a patient on an ‘at-risk’ register, to re-writing the entire care pathway. I hope that those on the frontline continue to innovate, to continue to share their best practice, and most of all continue to strive to attain excellence in diabetes care.

For my part, I will continue to work with other parliamentarians on behalf of the 2.9million people with diabetes, and the millions more who will be diagnosed with the condition in the years ahead for their right to the right care, at the right time.

Lord (Chris) Rennard is a Lib Dem peer and former chief executive of the party.