MP praises OO involvement in cataract referral scheme

Frank Field, writing in the Times (March 23), said that direct optometrist referral helped speed up the process. 'I visited a mobile cataract operating theatre in my constituency run by a South African company for the NHS,' he said. 'It took six weeks for the local trust to reply to the letter I had written on behalf of my constituent and inform me he would have to wait 65 weeks. Now, thanks to this mobile team, my constituents can be referred from their opticians to the hospital and have the operation in half the time it took the trust to respond.'
Field, who has been Birkenhead's MP since 1979, suggested in 2001 that operating teams should be introduced into the UK to speed up treatment. On March 19, almost three years to the day after the reform was suggested, the MP visited the Mobile Cataract Treatment Centre at St Catherine's Hospital in the Wirral to see how the idea had been brought to fruition in his own constituency.
In his article the MP calls for further reform including a website which patients can visit to assess the length of waiting lists between hospitals and consultants, and an increased emphasis on NHS treatment being carried out in the EU.
Interested readers can write to the MP at: fieldfparliament.uk