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Written Question
Ophthalmic Services
Monday 26th February 2024

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 - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

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.


Written Question
Ophthalmic Services
Wednesday 29th November 2023

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 - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

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.


Written Question
Visual Impairment
Friday 2nd December 2022

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 - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

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.


Written Question
Patients: Visual Impairment
Friday 13th March 2020

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 - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

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


Written Question
Ophthalmic Services
Thursday 17th October 2019

Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)

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 - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

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.


Written Question
Ophthalmology
Thursday 18th October 2018

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.


Written Question
Visual Impairment
Thursday 5th July 2018

Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to improve the quality of emotional and practical support made available on the NHS to patients with poor eye health.

Answered by Steve Brine

The Government fully appreciates the impact poor eye health can have on a person’s life and the importance of emotional and practical support available particularly for those newly diagnosed with sight loss.

There is a range of support available for those with visual impairments. Individuals certified as severely sight impaired (blind) or sight impaired (partially sighted) have access to help and support from the point of diagnosis which may include referral to specialist low vision clinics.

Many hospitals have Eye Clinic Liaison Officers, or similar early intervention support staff, who work closely with medical and nursing staff in eye clinics. They provide directly or can sign post patients to the practical and other support they need to understand their diagnosis, deal with their sight loss and maintain their independence.

Patients certified as having sight impairment are then able to register with their local authority (LA). The LA will then carry out an assessment of the individual’s needs. The support from the National Health Service and local authorities is in addition to the important additional support provided from charities such as the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Guide Dogs.


Written Question
Ophthalmic Services
Monday 15th January 2018

Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Independent - Enfield, Southgate)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will introduce a national eye health strategy to address the increase in the level of sight-threatening conditions.

Answered by Steve Brine

The Government takes sight loss very seriously. The Public Health Outcomes Framework includes an indicator that tracks the rate of reported sight loss (measured through the number of new certifications of visual impairment rate per 100,000 population) including the rates for the three main causes of preventable sight loss - glaucoma, age related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. The Department also supports Vision UK, an umbrella organisation for the eye health and sight loss sector, which aims to improve eye health and end sight loss, improve support across eye health and social care services and improve awareness of sight loss.

Given the size of England, and the diversity of the health needs of different communities, we believe commissioning needs to be owned and managed locally and there are therefore no plans to introduce a national eye health strategy.


Written Question
Eyesight: Health Services
Monday 16th October 2017

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, what representations he has received from (a) RNIB and (b) other bodies on the time taken for access to treatment for eye care; and what steps he is taking to minimise the risk for patients experiencing irreversible sight loss due to delayed and cancelled appointments.

Answered by Steve Brine

The Department has had representations from the Royal National Institute of Blind People and received letters from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, Clinical Council for Eye Health Commissioning, All Party Parliamentary Group for Eye Health and Visual Impairment and the Chair of the Health Select Committee.

There are currently national rules in place that should ensure if a patient’s planned follow on appointment is postponed their wait is actively monitored. In light of concerns that patients may be suffering avoidable sight loss due to delays in follow up appointments, Departmental officials are currently working with NHS England to assess the situation.


Written Question
Visual Impairment
Monday 13th June 2016

Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of whether the Government is on target to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020.

Answered by Alistair Burt

The indicator within the Public Health Outcomes Framework brings together the range of information on levels of preventable sight loss in a single place.

The indicator is made up of four sub-indicators which are measuring the crude rates of Age-Related Macular Degeneration, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, and of the rate of sight loss certifications per 100,000 population.

The latest data published by the Public Health Outcomes framework show that there were the following new certifications of visual impairment in 2013/14:

- 11,055 for age related macular degeneration, a decrease of 90 from 2012/13;

- 3,432 for glaucoma, an increase of 141 from 2012/13;

- 1,563 for diabetic eye disease, a decrease of 29 from 2012/13; and

- 22,911 overall new certifications (all causes), an increase of 264 from 2012/13.

Early detection is essential to tackling preventable sight loss. A range of treatment and services are in place in the National Health Service to deal with the key causes of preventable sight loss.