Global diabetes award presented to Ipswich Hospital

An internationally recognised accolade has been awarded to a team at Ipswich Hospital for its outstanding integrated clinical care initiative for people with diabetes.

Ipswich Hospital, part of the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, is one of the three top winning care teams in the Univants of Healthcare Excellence Award Programme.

The global healthcare excellence award spans 175 countries and acknowledges teams which work together across various disciplines to improve healthcare delivery, outcomes and patients’ lives.

Professor Gerry Rayman, Dr Ruth Deroy, Emma Page, Rachel Allen and Alison Czarnota at Ipswich Hospital won the honour for ‘Improving the peri-operative pathway of people with diabetes undergoing elective surgery: the IP3D project’.

“The IP3D programme involved engaging, educating and empowering patients through the use of a novel perioperative passport and the appointment of a perioperative diabetes specialist nurse (PeriopDSN) whose role included implementation of the passport, patient support and staff education. The IP3D programme ensured that best practice was in place throughout the patient journey,” said Professor Gerry Rayman, Lead Consultant Diabetologist at Ipswich Hospital. “The IP3D programme has shown significant improvements in perioperative diabetes care.”

Their strategic application of laboratory medicine and creation of a perioperative passport for people with diabetes, led to improved patient safety, reduced in-hospital complications by 12 per cent, decreased hospital length of stay by 1.5 days and decreased mitigated healthcare costs by £157,000 per year.

Emma Page, Transformation Manager and Project Lead at Ipswich Hospital, said: “The diabetes perioperative passport was designed to empower the patient in their surgical journey.”

The main concerns for the winning team were ensuring that patients received the best care possible and to reduce negative surgical outcomes for people living with diabetes.

They developed the IP3D programme to help patients have a good experience in hospital and to make sure they are not disadvantaged because they have diabetes.

“This is the most effective, joyful and successful innovation I’ve been part of in 30 years as an anaesthetist,” said Ruth Deroy, Lead Consultant for Perioperative care.

To find out more about the Univants of Healthcare Excellence winners visit: https://www.univantshce.com/int/en/2022-winners.html

To know more about the support available from GIRFT contact emma.page8@nhs.net.