As the voice of the profession, we work closely with our members, partners across the eye care sector and policymakers to improve public policy so key challenges facing ophthalmology services across the UK are recognised and addressed.
Since our last roundup, we:
- Participated in a panel event at the Labour Party Conference. Our President, Professor Ben Burton, joined Simon Opher MP, Chair of the Health All-Party Parliamentary Group, and representatives from National Voices, Roche and Asthma + Lung UK to discuss the implications of the hospital to community shift for patients.
- Met senior NHSE officials to discuss ongoing commissioning challenges, and the key implications and opportunities of the 10 Year Health Plan (including neighbourhood ophthalmology).
- Responded to NHS England’s (NHSE) Payment Scheme consultation on ophthalmology tariffs. While welcoming the intent to correct system imbalances by reducing the cataract tariff and increase tariffs for other ophthalmology services, we cautioned that the proposed blanket 15% uplift for all other services would overly incentivise certain treatments. We urged NHSE to instead introduce a differential tariff between independent sector and NHS providers delivering NHS cataract surgery, and for savings to be used for key transformation projects.
- Published our latest summary of cataract training in the independent sector. This shows that access to training opportunities is continuing to improve, though further efforts are needed to broaden opportunities and embed training in contracts.
- Endorsed the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Wales’ Senedd Election 2026 Manifesto. This calls for greater investment in the NHS workforce, prevention, integration and digital transformation.
- Refreshed our AI directory, adding software vendor updates for existing artificial intelligence as a medical device tools and creating entries for new ones.
- Responded to the Public Accounts Committee consultation on reducing NHS waiting times for elective care. We suggested innovations that should be adopted at scale to increase efficiency and reduce patient waiting times. These included a single point of access to streamline referrals, virtual pods to reduce face-to-face appointments, and greater IT interoperability to improve patient triaging and diagnostic accuracy.
- Co-signed a letter asking the Department for Education to establish a working group on low-incidence, high-need disabilities – including vision impairment – to ensure reforms explicitly address the needs of this group.