Verum writes: Writing our own NHS chapter

Last month in this column I drew attention to the newly published NHS 10 year plan and highlighted that eye health did not appear to be on the agenda at all. Despite the document being 136 pages long, there was basically no mention of eye health or optometry. However, this should not be the case, as the aims of each of the seven chapters, which the plan is divided into, can be linked to a greater of lesser extent to what optical practice has to offer.

Perhaps the key chapter for us to focus on is chapter one, which sets out how the NHS will move to a new service model in which patients get more options, better support, and properly joined-up care at the right time in the optimal care setting. It states that GP practices and hospital outpatients currently provide around 400 million face-to-face appointments each year, however, there is the aim to redesign hospital support to avoid up to a third of outpatient appointments – saving patients 30 million trips to hospital, and saving the NHS over £1 billion a year. This chapter goes on further to describe how GP practices will be funded to work together to deal with pressures in primary care and extend the range of convenient local services, creating genuinely integrated teams of GPs, community health and social care staff. I would suggest that for eye health matters we should be replacing GP practice with optical practice. We can offer greater care in the community for a number of conditions, more convenience to patients, and as ophthalmology outpatient appointments are now around 10% of all outpatient appointments this will contribute to a significant reduction.