Diabetes

Organising your annual cycle of care

If you would prefer to manage the diabetes annual cycle of care outside your clinical software, you could use this paper-based patient SIP tracker (either keep it within the patient's medical records or within a specific folder), or this spreadsheet organiser on the server with access via appropriate workstations.

Links

Diabetes information resource for the Central Highlands Region

Diabetes Management in General Practice RACGP/Diabetes Australia, 14th Edition 2008/09

Diabetes Nurse Educators

We have a list of Diabetes Nurse Educators in Ballarat.

Use this guide when referring people with diabetes (type 1, type 2, gestational or pre-diabetes) to a Diabetes Nurse Educator.

This flowchart will help you prioritise patients you may wish to refer to a DNE (see additional guidelines).

The resources above result from the Diabetes Steering Group.

Foot care

The diabetic foot toolkit - a useful site to aid the treatment of the diabetic foot.

Diabetes Prevention

At a COAG meeting in 2007 just prior to the change of government, $103.4m was allocated to preventing Type 2 Diabetes. The resulting "Type 2 Diabetes Prevention Program" has 2 main arms:

  1. the introduction of the new MBS Item 713 and use of associated items 717 and 710, and
  2. Lifestyle Modification Programs (LMPs) targeting people aged 40 - 49 who are at high risk of developing diabetes

Just recently, the Victorian Government announced there would be a state wide roll-out of the Life! program, which until now, had only been introduced in selected areas, not including Ballarat.

Life! is also a Diabetes Prevention program targeting people over 50 who are at high risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.

There are now 2 accredited providers in Ballarat who can facilitate both LMP and Life! programs and essentially, anyone 40 years and over at high risk can be referred. The difference is in the process, which GPs and practices need to know; to find out more visit our diabetes prevention page.