Plan for better links to NHS

Proposals to connect community optical practices to the rest of the NHS and care system are due to be submitted to the government early in the New Year.

The Optical Confederation has told ministers, the Department of Health and NHS England of the plans, being drawn together by its national IT policy manager Mordechai Chachamu.

He said: ‘Key to this in our view is connecting community optical practices with their GP, hospital and social care opposite numbers. This view is further reinforced by the government’s ambition for the NHS to be paperless by 2018 and also by the recent commitments to more joined-up working in a clinically led patient-focused system under the government’s response to the mid-Staffordshire inquiry.’