Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing a national standard offering for glaucoma testing.

Integrated care boards are responsible for assessing the health needs of their local population and for commissioning primary and secondary eye care services to meet them, which could include glaucoma referral filtering services.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guideline on the diagnosis and management of glaucoma, reference code NG81, recommends that people planning eye care services should consider commissioning referral filtering services, for example, repeat measures, enhanced case-finding, or referral refinement, for chronic open angle glaucoma and related conditions. This guideline is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng81

The Getting It Right First Time programme is currently developing best practice guidance for glaucoma services to support the adoption of high standards across the pathway, from detection onwards.