Improving the management of type 2 diabetes through large-scale general practice: the role of a data-driven and technology-enabled education programme

A quality improvement (QI) scheme was launched in 2017, covering a large group of 25 general practices working with a deprived registered population. The aim was to improve the measurable quality of care in a population where type 2 diabetes (T2D) care had previously proved challenging. A complex set of QI interventions were co-designed by a team of primary care clinicians and educationalists and managers. These interventions included organisation-wide goal setting, using a data-driven approach, ensuring staff engagement, implementing an educational programme for pharmacists, facilitating web-based QI learning at-scale and using methods which ensured sustainability. This programme was used to optimise the management of T2D through improving the eight care processes and three treatment targets which form part of the annual national diabetes audit for patients with T2D. With the implemented improvement interventions, there was significant improvement in all care processes and all treatment targets for patients with diabetes. Achievement of all the eight care processes improved by 46.0% (p<0.001) while achievement of all three treatment targets improved by 13.5% (p<0.001). The QI programme provides an example of a data-driven large-scale multicomponent intervention delivered in primary care in ethnically diverse and socially deprived areas.