On 4th June the Camden and Islington LDC was joined by Nita Bull from Transformation Partners in Health and Care (TPHC) who spoke about the development of a pilot program focused on the link between periodontitis and diabetes management. The pre pilot will focus initially on patients in Enfield, with plans to build in the learning and roll the pilot out across North Central London (NCL).
The pilot is being set up by NCL Integrated Care Board under the guidance of the dental clinical health lead Dr Rakhee Patel. It will focus on the bidirectional link between diabetes management and gum health. The goal is to target the more complex patients from the diabetic population who are not currently affiliated with an NHS dentist, or accessing dental care, to measure the impact of improved gum health on their diabetes over an 18 month period.
While the pilot had initially been envisaged as covering the whole of North Central London (Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey), it became clear that there were a lot of data unknowns between general practices and dental practices. It was therefore decided that it would be more appropriate to develop a small pre pilot (50 to 200 patients) to better understand the data, learn as much as possible and refine the model to support wider roll out in NCL next year.
The pre-pilot is being developed in a deprived area of Enfield with a high prevalence of patients with poorly managed diabetes in close liaison with the Enfield GP Federation. The specific participating general practices and dental practices were yet to be determined. The work will include developing the data capture and establishing data sharing arrangements between GPs and dentists. It is anticipated that there will be issues of non-attendance among this cohort, and this will be monitored closely.
Funding will primarily cover dental hygienist appointments to make them free for participating patients while any dental treatments would fall under the standard NHS dental contract. It was yet to be determined whether a dental hygienist had to be used or whether a dental associate could provide the hygiene treatment in this model. Training will be provided to all dental practices involved.
This is a really interesting and exciting pilot and the LDC looks forward to seeing how it works in Enfield, the learning that comes from this, and supporting its wider roll out across North Central London in due course.
The slides from the meeting are available here
