Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what provisions he is making in the National Health Service to ensure that patients with long term eye conditions receive adequate practical and emotional support.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the importance of practical and emotional support for people living with long term eye conditions. Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities are responsible for assessing individuals’ care and support needs and, where eligible, for meeting those needs. This includes the legal duty for local authorities to support people with sight loss.
NHS England has published a patient support toolkit for eye care commissioners and providers which aims to ensure that patients with ophthalmic conditions are supported throughout their care journey. It sets out that whilst receiving care provided by the hospital, patients need information and support through diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. Individuals can also refer themselves into talking therapies, which are widely available.
We are also taking steps to revise the certificate of visual impairment to improve signposting to local support for newly certified patients with a sight impairment or severe sight impairment.
Asked by: Shockat Adam (Independent - Leicester South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help reduce regional variations in access to eye care services; and what discussions his Department has had with the optometry sector on increasing the use of community-based care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards are responsible for assessing the health needs of their population and for commissioning primary and secondary eye care services to meet them.
Over the last 12 months I have met with a number of representatives across the eye care sector including The Optometric Fees Negotiating Committee, The Eyes Have It Partnership, as well as members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Eye Health and Visual impairment, which included the Hon. Member for Leicester South, to discuss primary eye care services. Officials in the Department also regularly meet with optometry stakeholders.
Asked by: Shockat Adam (Independent - Leicester South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions his Department has had with stakeholders in the optometry sector on the future delivery of primary eye care services in the last 12 months.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards are responsible for assessing the health needs of their population and for commissioning primary and secondary eye care services to meet them.
Over the last 12 months I have met with a number of representatives across the eye care sector including The Optometric Fees Negotiating Committee, The Eyes Have It Partnership, as well as members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Eye Health and Visual impairment, which included the Hon. Member for Leicester South, to discuss primary eye care services. Officials in the Department also regularly meet with optometry stakeholders.
Asked by: Shockat Adam (Independent - Leicester South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with representatives of the optometry sector on the future delivery of primary eye care services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards are responsible for assessing the health needs of their population and for commissioning primary and secondary eye care services to meet them.
Over the last 12 months I have met with a number of representatives across the eye care sector including The Optometric Fees Negotiating Committee, The Eyes Have It Partnership, as well as members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Eye Health and Visual impairment, which included the Hon. Member for Leicester South, to discuss primary eye care services. Officials in the Department also regularly meet with optometry stakeholders.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of enabling appropriately qualified optometrists to issue certificates of vision impairment.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
We recognise that the Certificate of Visual Impairment is an important step in enabling individuals with sight loss to access appropriate support. In England, that certification is currently undertaken by ophthalmologists, who are specialists in eye conditions. No assessment has yet been made of the potential merits of enabling appropriate qualified optometrists to issue certificates of visual impairment.
Asked by: Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will meet the Visual Impairment Charity Sector Partnership to discuss the RNIB's report entitled The eye care support pathway, published in November 2023.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Department welcomes the publication of the Royal National Institute of Blind People's Eye Care Support Pathway. NHS England contributed to its development and is looking to embed the pathway in the eyecare transformation programme. Furthermore, NHS England has offered to support the dissemination of the pathway to eyecare commissioners and providers.
I will be scheduling meetings with a range of eye care stakeholders over the coming weeks and months and am looking forward to discussing this with relevant stakeholders.
Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential economic impact of sight loss.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
No recent assessment has been made.
In August 2021, Deloitte Access Economics estimated that in 2019, the total economic cost of sight loss was £36 billion per year in England. This included an estimated £3.4 billion in healthcare system costs, £7.8 billion in productivity losses and other financial costs, and £24.8 billion in reduced wellbeing.
Local authorities maintain information on individuals registered with a visual impairment and have an obligation to assess them promptly and provide support. There are also more than 300 eye charities in the United Kingdom which provide support for those with sight loss and many hospital eye clinics have liaison officers and optometrists specialising in low vision. The development of integrated care systems and the National Ophthalmic Eye Care Recovery and Transformation Programme is ensuring coordinated social and clinical care from prevention and screening to accessible treatment and support for visual impairment.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 January 2020 to Question 8395 on Visual Impairment, what plans his Department has to begin collecting data on patients' experiencing loss of sight while awaiting NHS treatment.
Answered by Jo Churchill
There are no current plans to begin collecting data on patients’ experiencing loss of sight while awaiting National Health Service treatment.
The current NHS access standard for referral to elective treatment requires that patients will be seen within a maximum waiting time of 18 weeks. Clinical priority is the main determinant of when patients should be treated followed by the chronological order of when they were added to the list.
NHS England’s Elective Care Transformation Programme is supporting hospital eye service departments to better manage demand and minimise the risk of significant harm to patients. Further information can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/transforming-elective-care-services-ophthalmology
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has taken steps in response to the recommendations of the report entitled See the light: Improving capacity in NHS eye care in England, published by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment in June 2018.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The Department welcomed the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report, ‘See the Light: Improving capacity in NHS eye care in England’. We have taken the concerns of the profession and the wider sight loss sector about timeliness of patient access to eye care services very seriously.
In response to concerns about timely access to care, two key initiatives the Elective Care Transformation Programme led by NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Getting It Right First Time programme have considered, as part of their respective programmes, how we can improve patient outcomes in secondary care eye care services and ensure that patients do not suffer unnecessary delays in follow-up care.
The Department is currently working with stakeholders to finalise the response to the report, which will be sent to the APPG at the earliest opportunity and following this, published on the gov.uk website.
Asked by: Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his Department's policies of the report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment on capacity issues in eye care in England published in June 2018.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department is carefully considering the recommendations of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment report ‘See the Light: improving capacity in NHS eye care in England’, and our response to those recommendations, alongside NHS England.