Read the latest RCOphth news updates and guidance here.
On 22 September, the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Dr Therese Coffey, set out the Government’s plan to improve patient experience of the NHS in England, outlining a range of measures relating to backlogs, workforce challenges, and digitisation of the NHS. RCOphth Policy Advisor David Murray summarises the key implications for NHS ophthalmology services.
The government has announced that over 50 new surgical hubs will open across England to help alleviate Covid backlogs and offer quicker patient access to vital procedures. The new hubs will focus mainly on providing high-volume low, complexity surgery, including ophthalmology.
Following the national procurement for medical retinal vascular medicines, NHS England has published an operational note on Commissioning recommendations. This followed discussions with various stakeholders, including members of The Royal College of Ophthalmologists.
NHS England has recently published a suite of decision support tools. The tools cover varying conditions and include Making a decision about cataracts, Making a decision about open-angle glaucoma and Making a decision about wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), along with guidance on how to use them and evaluating the impact.
In 2019/20, there were 9 million outpatient attendances for all five vision treatment specialties1. As the leading outpatient speciality in the NHS, the appointment of Louisa Wickham to the post of National Clinical Director (NCD) for Eye Care is long overdue and welcomed.
Letters have been sent recently to NHS organisations across England and the devolved administrations encouraging them to continue to look favourably on requests from doctors seeking their support to undertake national or regional work for the wider benefit of the public, and of health services.
Wales has had many problems with the delivery of effective eye care services for a long time, made a lot worse by the challenges of the Covid pandemic, exacerbating backlogs which are potentially putting patient care at risk. The Pyott Report provides recommendations to improve services.
This is an online event, held by NHS England and NHS Improvement eye care pathways improvement programme, the National Eye Care Recovery and Transformation Programme (NECRTP).
Mel Hingorani is RCOphth Honorary Secretary and Joint Clinical Lead of the National Eye Care Recovery and Transformation Programme (NECRTP) and is a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital. In this article, she reflects in her College capacity on what has been achieved by the programme so far and what still needs to happen.
The government and NHS England published a joint plan last week setting out how they intend to support the recovery of elective services over the next three years. RCOphth Policy Manager Jordan Marshall summarises the key implications for ophthalmology services.
