Commissioning in the four UK nations

30 November 2018
Autumn 2018
Public health

Which optometric services across the UK are taking on more of the healthcare burden, asks John Windell.

NHS hospital eye services in the UK are at full stretch. In 2016-17, A&E departments in England handled more than 450,000 eye-related incidents (2.2 per cent of all attendances), while total ophthalmology outpatient attendances approached 7.6 million – 10 per cent higher than four years earlier (NHS Digital, 2017a; 2017b).

How does the manner in which commissioning and funding are undertaken across the four nations of the UK allow optometrists to take up more of this burden?

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