Moneo writes: Secretary of State for Health provides myopic view of the future

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, gave a trailblazing speech about three weeks ago outlining his future vision for the NHS in this country. It was hailed as a vision for the next twenty five years. Having listened to the speech and also read the NHS Five Year Forward View I would suggest that far from having vision his view of the future should be registered seriously sight impaired.

Yet again we have a Secretary of State for Health who still thinks the NHS is all about doctors nurses and hospitals. It could be argued this time around that it also involves consultants. In truth the main reason for this speech was probably to make a political statement about requiring hospital consultants to work a seven day week. If he bothered to look just a little out of his normal health silo he would see that certain sectors of healthcare such as optometry have been offering a seven day a week service to patients for many years. If only he was aware of that he could have held this up as a beacon for good practice. The sad fact is that, despite what we have been told by various organisations within this profession, optometry just doesn’t exist on the radar of health care.