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 ensure all patients receive sight saving treatment when they need it.

Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning secondary care ophthalmology services to meet local need. We would expect services to be commissioned in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance where it is available or best available evidence and for patients to receive treatment, in line with their clinical priority, without any undue delay at any stage of their referral, diagnosis or treatment.

National Health Service patients have a right in the NHS Constitution to drugs and treatments recommended by NICE, where the patient's clinician considers it appropriate.

Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) is a national clinical improvement programme, working with frontline clinicians to identify and reduce unwarranted variations in service delivery and clinical practice. NHS England advise the GIRFT report into ophthalmology, which will contain recommendations for service improvement, is due for publication shortly.