Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-04-18.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the comments by the President of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists that hundreds of patients are going blind because hospitals cannot meet the demand for appointments.
Lord Prior of Brampton
Given the size of England, and the diversity of the health needs of different communities, we believe commissioning needs to be owned and managed locally.
Therefore, there are no plans to develop a national strategy for eye care.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for commissioning hospital eye services and for holding their providers to account in terms of contract performance. CCGs are also able to commission eye care services from community optometrists where they judge them to be needed in their areas over and above the sight tests commissioned by NHS England. Such services could include post cataract surgery reviews, glaucoma monitoring and low vision services which may reduce pressure on hospital eye departments, reduce waiting times and make patient care pathways more accessible in the community.
There is scope for further work to be done by community optometrists and the Clinical Council for eye health commissioning is working with commissioners to develop commissioning guidelines in this area.
CCGs have the ability to develop alternatives to hospital care. We would expect patients who require further planned stages of treatment in line with their agreed care plan, to receive this treatment without undue delay and in line with when it is clinically appropriate.
