Diabetes consultation note changing landscape for diabetes patients
15 June 2023
An electronic record designed specifically for diabetes patients is going from strength to strength. Over 6,000 Diabetes consultation notes (DCN) are created each month and more than 150,000 DCNs have been created since it was launched in 2019.
The DCN provides real time access to all diabetes care information on a single platform within the Welsh Clinical Portal. It improves quality and safety of care by reducing the duplications of tests, treatment and appointments, and allows quicker access to data for all health care professionals.
Greeshma Sibi, Lead Diabetes Specialist Nurse at Morriston Hospital, said the DCN “ensures that everyone involved in a patient care journey has access to the necessary information, facilitating coordinated and collaborative decision making.”
The DCN is part of the Welsh Information Solution for Diabetes Management (WISDM), along with the Diabetes View which is a single read-only summary of the patients key diabetes and test information. DCNs have been viewed over 270,000 times and are used by consultants, nurses, podiatrists, dietitians, obstetricians and gynaecologists as well as health care assistants and administrative staff. The views include health boards who can see the notes but are not yet live to create them.
Diabetes Service Lead Dietitian for Hywel Dda University Health Board, Emma Barker said, “WISDM for us as a team has been amazingly beneficial so we can see current, up to date information from the other diabetes multi-disciplinary teams, this helps aid us within our assessments ensuring we are all working together to ensure best patient care.”
The DCN is currently live in Swansea Bay University Health Board, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board and Hywel Dda University Health Board (HDUHB). Upcoming releases will see the the DCN provide the full diabetes record throughout the patient’s lifetime by delivering a paediatric review tab.
Dr Swe Lynn & Yvonne Davies, from Paediatrics at HDUHB said, “The platform streamlines the communication between the secondary and primary care. In future, we also hope to use the paediatric version of the platform as a database for National Paediatric Diabetes Audit.”
Work is ongoing to ensure that data from the DCN can be fed back to the health boards via a data extract and statistics dashboard. This will give health boards the ability to monitor and improve patient outcomes and support national diabetes audits and diabetes related research and trials.