IGT Care Call highly commended at Care Integration Awards
CLAHRC GM is celebrating once again after being ‘highly commended’ for the Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT) Care Call project at this year’s Care Integration Awards in the diabetes category. The Care Integration Awards, which run alongside the Patient Safety Awards, were organised by the HSJ and Nursing Times. Both are new awards recognising and rewarding excellence in collaborative clinical practice, designed to recognise, promote and reward outstanding efforts that demonstrate integration across the different elements of healthcare and provide flexible, efficient and responsive services that meet the need of patients. The team led one of ten projects shortlisted from 27 submissions and the judges recognised two as ‘highly commended’ in addition to the overall winner. Working together, the CLAHRC GM and Salford Diabetes Team developed a six month telephone based, lifestyle intervention programme for people diagnosed with IGT with the aim of reducing their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The programme provided motivation, support and evidence based education via a series of electronic scripts developed and maintained by the specialist diabetes team. Working individually with participants, health advisors tailored supporting resources to assist patients in the achievement of their lifestyle goal which included provision of information about local NHS and community services. In 2011, IGT Care Call won the Quality in Care Diabetes award for best type 2 diabetes preventative initiative. Since the success of the project, IGT Care Call is now being rolled out to all GP practices in Salford and being offered to people diagnosed with impaired fasting glucose (IFG) in addition to IGT. Professor Ruth Boaden, CLAHRC GM Deputy Director and Lead for Implementation, said: “This is a fantastic achievement which recognises the excellent results we’ve had with the IGT Care Call programme so far, and the dedication of the team who set it up, delivered and evaluated it. “Providing an intervention to help prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes saves them from the numerous complications of diabetes later in life. This also means it costs the NHS less in the long term. “Patients like the flexible service delivered by phone that motivates and enables them to make positive changes to their lifestyles around diet and exercise. “There was intense competition for these awards so we are very proud to have been in the top three at national level. We are now expanding the service further as well as following up patients involved in the original project so hope to have even more impressive results to share when it comes to the time to apply for next year’s awards."
Date Published: 06/07/2012