Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure complex ophthalmology care is provided in a timely fashion.

We have committed to ensuring that 92% of all patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment (RTT) by March 2029. Since the Government came into office, the waiting list for routine appointments, operations, and procedures in England has now been cut by 374,083, and RTT performance has improved by 2.6%. This is despite 33.3 million referrals onto the waiting list.

In ophthalmology, the national waiting list stands at 602,163 pathways, with 69.8% of those having waited 18 weeks or less. This marks a 3.7% improvement in RTT performance since the Government came into office.

We are committed to expanding the number of surgical hubs, which provide dedicated and protected elective capacity to drive improvement in six specialities, including ophthalmology. We are reducing missed appointments through enhanced two-way communication between hospitals and patients, supported by artificial intelligence prediction tools. We are also expanding the use of remote monitoring and patient-initiated follow up, where appropriate, to offer patients more flexibility over their care.

Improved IT connectivity between primary and secondary eye care services and the development of single points of access has also shown its ability to improve the referral and triage of patients and support more care being delivered in the community.