Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the costs of a patient who presents with eye conditions as a first point of call (a) a GP, (b) a hospital eye service, (c) an accident and emergency department and (d) a primary eyecare acute referral scheme.

The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is shown in the following table.

Estimated unit costs of a patient contact , 2012-13

Notes:

¹The Department does not collect information on the unit cost of a GP consultation. An estimate of £37 per patient contact lasting 11.7 minutes, including direct care staff costs and excluding qualification costs, is included in page 198 of Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2013 at www.pssru.ac.uk/project-pages/unit-costs/2013/. The data does not separately identify patients presenting with eye conditions or any other conditions.

²The average unit cost of first, face-to-face, consultant-led contacts in ophthalmology, medical ophthalmology and paediatric ophthalmology, weighted for activity. The information is from reference costs, which are the unit costs to NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts of providing defined services in a given financial year to NHS patients, collected annually and published by the Department for 2012-13 at www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-reference-costs-2012-to-2013

³The average unit of cost of accident and emergency attendances from 2012-13 reference costs. Includes attendances resulting in and not resulting in an admission. Excludes attendances submitted against Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs) for Emergency Medicine, Dental Care (VB10Z) and Emergency Medicine, No Investigation with No Significant Treatment (VB11Z). The data does not separately identify patients presenting with eye conditions or any other conditions.

Sources:

2012/13 reference costs, Department of Health

Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2013, Personal Social Services Research Unit