Eye care – The Eyes Have It calls for a national strategy – Flame Health Blog

Eye care - The Eyes Have It calls for a national strategy

The partnership wants NHS England’s new national clinical director for eye care to ‘tackle delays and fragmented care for eye patients’.

The Eyes Have It partnership is calling on NHS England’s newly appointed national clinical director for eye care to prioritise reducing “delays and fragmented care for eye patients.”

The group emphasised that “many patients could be losing their vision due to delays in NHS diagnosis and follow-up care after referral.”

It encouraged Louisa Wickham, who took up her role as national clinical director for eye earlier this month (July), to implement a national strategy for eye care.

Wickham is a consultant ophthalmic surgeon and medical director of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The Eyes Have It is a national partnership of organisations that works to improve the lives of those with eye conditions. Including the AOP, The Royal College of Ophthalmologists, the Macular Society, Fight for Sight, and Roche Products Ltd.

In June, the partnership led a roundtable discussion. With leading clinicians, policymakers, and patient organisations that covered issues around patient support after referral. Also, inconsistent commissioning processes from primary to secondary care. As well as deficiency in support and funding for clinical eye research. And the fact that a lack of national, standardised data is preventing effective national planning.