Call for publication of report on primary care eye services

Charity Fighting Blindness has called for the immediate publication of a long-delayed review of primary care eye services against a backdrop of more than 13,000 patients on waiting lists for eye procedures.

The figure, which relates to inpatient and day cases, is the highest across all specialties and includes 3,553 patients waiting over a year according to the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF). It also includes more than 400 children, of whom 54 are waiting more than a year.

Consultant opthalmologist David Keegan said eye care has been “constantly under-resourced” in the decade since he returned to work in Ireland in 2006.

However, he was hopeful the success of the National Diabetic Retinal Screening Programme (NDRSP), which has screened 216,000 peoplein the community since 2013, would convince the HSE that more eye care services can be delivered effectively in community settings.

“This would relieve the stress on acute hospitals and should free up more clinical and surgical space to tackle waiting lists, if properly resourced,” Mr Keegan said.

He said he was “uncomfortable” with the NTPF “because it moves funding out of the public system and limits growth”.

“But, maybe in the past, the public system was not as efficient as it could have been,” he said. For instance children were often referred on after being seen in the school screening programme “where maybe they didn’t need to be, so although cases were not being missed, we were flooding the system”.

There was a need for greater efficiency, such as having the kind of electronic database that underpins the success of the NDRSP “so that we get visibility on problems straight away and we know where to direct resources”, Mr Keegan said.

Kevin Whelan, CEO of Fighting Blindness, said the Review of Primary Care Eye Services offered a potential roadmap to providing a more effective service for patients and addressing waiting lists.

“Current ophthalmology waiting list numbers are extremely concerning. They mean that a sight issue will continue to interfere with a person’s quality of life for so much longer than is necessary,” Mr Whelan said.

The review was due to be published in the summer of 2015. The call for immediate publication was made yesterday at the Fighting Blindness RETINA 2016 conference which continues in Dublin today. The HSE has said the report and implementation plan will be finalised towards the end of the year.