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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The main purpose of the bill is to abolish NHS England and centralise its services, creating single patient records where patient health information is available in one place.
The College of Optometrists has today launched a public consultation on the next edition of its Guidance for Professional Practice which will be open for the next six weeks until Monday 3 August 2026.