CCEHC responds to NHS England’s 10-Year Health Plan

We believe key elements in driving this agenda forward are:

• The development of common pathways and standards so as to continue and deepen the collaboration between primary, secondary and community eye care
• Delivering better data and clinical communications across pathways, professions and sites.
• Effective ways of assessing value and payment systems to support the change
• Improved workforce planning to ensure that all professionals have opportunity to further develop their skills, and we have the eye care capacity to meet patient need within the new model of care

Some areas of eyecare already have effective screening programs, for instance, diabetic retinopathy. Others, such as child vision screening, await universal rollout. There is effective case finding delivered by high street optometric practices for conditions such as glaucoma, but this is dependent on patients initiating access to consultations. There is a need to improve awareness of eye conditions and to encourage patients and the public to present appropriately, with symptomatic and asymptomatic eye conditions, to improve long term visual outcomes.

Our individual member organisations will highlight specific projects which would support these aims. However, we think that the themes we have highlighted support the aims of the 10-Year Health Plan and can serve as a test against which individual projects can be assessed.