Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will publish an update on progress made in implementing the National Outpatient Transformation Programme, with specific reference to ophthalmology services.

NHS England and NHS Improvement launched the National Outpatient Transformation Programme in April 2020 to modernise outpatient services and reduce face to face appointments by a third. As of October 2021, it had facilitated over 34.4 million remote consultations, supporting general practitioners to treat more patients without onward referrals and enabling patients to book follow up appointments when needed. This has increased capacity for those needing face to face consultations.

In November 2021, 1,327 or 0.21% of ophthalmology outpatients booked follow up appointments. There were 11,574 specialist advice requests for ophthalmology which reduced onward referrals by 15.5%.