As Professor Philip Bloom says in the newly published State of the UK’s Eye Health 2022 Report from Specsavers: ‘We have long needed more patients to be seen in community optometry practices. The rationale for lockdown was to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Well, our hospital eye services are overwhelmed!’
This welcome, though somewhat depressing, report was launched last week during a live online session chaired by the ‘just one thing’ media doctor Michael Mosley. In the post-pandemic landscape, there is a severe backlog of patients awaiting eye assessment and treatment; a number so large that waiting times are at a point where significant sight loss is more than likely for many patients. The report underlined the much anticipated and much wished for alignment of optometry, ophthalmology and other allied eye care professions in addressing the problem. The evolution of independent prescribing skills, improved accessibility to primary care eye clinics, and familiarity with modern technologies makes the role of eye care professionals key in returning the nations’ eye health to pre-pandemic levels.
The last live event I attended before the first lockdown was the College of Optometrists Optometry Tomorrow conference in an about-to-be-flooded Telford. One presentation that came to mind this week was that of eye bag impresario and optometry-friend Teifi James. Bemoaning the strain on secondary eye care services, he said: ‘Each year there are about eight million outpatient appointments in ophthalmology, about half of the number of eye tests each year in England. In fact, 20% of outpatient appointments are ophthalmology, but only about one in 30 hospital doctors are eye doctors.’ And this was a few weeks before we had even heard of the coronavirus.
My only concern is the obvious elephant in the room. Will we make sure that extended primary care services are budgeted for adequately, and that the current situation is not used by some to shoehorn in a new reliance on private care?
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