Quality Standards for Diabetes Care Toolkit

Implementation advice

Implementation advice is provided specific to each Standard. A first step is to know your community’s need for diabetes services. The Virtual Diabetes Register (VDR) provides a summary of prevalence data for each DHB by ethnicity and can be found here: www.nzssd.org.nz/news/Virtual%20Diabetes%20Register%20release%2031%20Dec%202012.pdf
In the VDR, type of diabetes is not identified; however, this is important as type 1 and type 2 diabetes are distinctly different conditions, requiring different services and approaches. Recognising the elements of diversity in your community – type of diabetes, ethnicity, age, social deprivation, geographical isolation, etc – is thus essential for the design and delivery of services that meet the needs of your community and to ensure appropriate reach.
Overarching implementation principles to be applied:

the Standards should be considered in their entirety and implemented via an alliancing framework

service level alliances can include people with diabetes and utilise clinical governance processes to reduce variation, share learning and focus on improving safety, quality and cost effectiveness

planning processes should be clinically led and agreed with a range of professional and community perspectives at the table (IPIF EAG report 2014a)

service design should occur in the light of locally agreed clinical pathways such as the Map of Medicine, Canterbury HealthPathways or Northern Regional clinical pathways

prior to implementation, it is important to consider current organisational infrastructure that addresses the following:

system and process design

training and education

culture and the need to shift values, beliefs and behaviours of the organisation.