Optometry must be prioritised in upcoming healthcare reforms, the Optometric Fees Negotiating Committee (OFNC) and the College of Optometrists have said.
The sector bodies have written to the minister of state for care, Stephen Kinnock MP, to emphasise that the 10-Year Health Plan must utilise primary eye care.
The letter came from Dr Gillian Ruddock, president of the College of Optometrists, and Paul Carroll, chair of the OFNC.
Ruddock and Carroll are calling for the government to make a long-term commitment to optometry, as part of its plans to move care from hospital to the community.
This includes the universal commissioning of community and urgent eye care services (MECS and CUES) to release capacity in hospitals to deliver consultant-led care, alongside enhanced IT connectivity to ensure more fluid communication between primary eye care providers and hospital services.
The economic benefit of universal commissioning of MECS and CUES is highlighted in a co-commissioned report from the AOP, Fight for Sight, Primary Eyecare Services and Roche Products Ltd, the letter noted.
The report, published in November 2024, estimated that four system-wide changes – national rollouts of CUES and the integrated glaucoma and cataract pathways, plus further use of optical coherence tomography in community settings – would save £98 million per year in England.
Universal commissioning of MECS and CUES “would sustain and improve waiting time reductions for ophthalmology, at the same time as increasing overall capacity so that hospitals can focus on those patients who need consultant-led care and not become overwhelmed again,” the letter stated.
Optical leaders emphasised their hope that Kinnock will include this in guidance to integrated care boards around the 10-Year Health Plan.
The letter also asked for read-write access to patient records for all primary care professionals, a move that would support the NHS’s transition from analogue to digital – another one of the Government’s planned ‘three shifts’ to transform healthcare.
In the letter, the OFNC and the College of Optometrists emphasised the critical role optometry professionals play, as the first point of contact for patients and the gatekeepers to hospital services.
Primary eye care is already helping to reduce ophthalmology waiting times, but needs greater support to maximise its impact, the letter said.
Ruddock and Carroll noted that 95% of the UK’s eye health needs are met within the primary eye care setting, and that because of this healthcare reforms are unlikely to succeed without long-term investment in the sector.
The letter came after a ‘positive exchange’ between Stephen Kinnock MP and Marsha de Cordova MP, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment, earlier this month, the OFNC and the College of Optometrists said.
The sector bodies “warmly welcome” Kinnock’s “commitments to a more joined-up strategy for eye care at the heart of the Plan and to equal access and genuine choice for all patients,” the letter added.
“These are the very principles on which NHS primary eye care has operated so successfully for many years and should be maintained in the future.”
“That is the base of the eye care pyramid on which all else depends,” they said.
The 10-Year Health Plan will be published in the summer, Department of Health and Social Care told OT.
The letter can be read in full here.
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