Do enhanced service schemes work?

13 July 2018
Summer 2018
Cataract Glaucoma Opinion

A six-year College project to evaluate the effectiveness of enhanced service schemes is ending. Acuity speaks to its co-principal investigator Dr Robert Harper FCOptom

Extended primary care services, or enhanced service schemes (ESS), have sprung up across England. Potential advantages include patients being seen more quickly, reduced pressure on GP appointments, fewer inappropriate referrals into secondary care and lower demand for hospital eye services – but the evidence of these hoped-for impacts has been lacking.

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