Plans to offer children funded access to optometrists starts, seven years after recommendation

The scheme will apply to children aged eight and over who are on hospital waiting lists for eye care.

Planning is underway to offer children funded access to local optometrists, seven years after a report recommended a similar move.

The scheme will apply to children, aged eight and over, who are on hospital waiting lists for eye care.

It follows concerns raised by FODO Ireland, the association of eye care providers, about a ‘postcode lottery’ for access to eye care for children.

Children who miss out on essential eye care reviews due to long waiting lists could suffer life-long consequences, the association warned.

They have found “significant differences” in access to help depending on where families live.

“There is a ‘postcode lottery’ created due to the operation of disparate local eye-care schemes around the country”, the association said.

Moving some eye care away from hospitals was recommended in a HSE report, published in April 2017. This advised setting up primary eye care teams offering medical and minor surgery.

The report said these teams could have “capacity to transfer 60% of outpatient care from the hospital setting to the primary care setting”.

This change, the report said, would “ensure that all eligible children and adults receive a high-quality service and increase prevention of unnecessary blindness”.

FODO Ireland said moving this much activity means hospitals could focus on patients who need specialist diagnostics or treatment including very young children.

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This week, the association called on Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to follow through on a specific commitment to move care of children aged eight and over away from hospitals.

Care could be delivered instead through an optometrist-led service run by local optical practices, they said.

Chairman and Waterford-based optometrist Garvan Mulligan has said the situation facing families in many areas is “shocking” now.

“Missing a child, leaving them out of a system for the year, is serious for their long-term vision, it has long-term implications for what job they can do, what vision they will have in that eye,” he told the Irish Examiner.

In response to the call, a Department of Health spokesman said “a detailed implementation plan, including costings” has already been requested from the HSE.

He said the HSE and Department are now working on this, and the plan will bring about standardised access nationwide for children aged over eight.

“The HSE supports the plan to discharge existing paediatric patients aged eight and over who have completed their treatment. This means that their annual review would be delivered by local optometrists,” he said.

The HSE agrees that this plan should be implemented nationally.” 

The HSE has also been developing integrated eye care teams, which include optometrists working within the HSE and other professions.

These are in place so far only in regions across Dublin and Wicklow but he said a team is being developed for Cork and Kerry.

“In those areas where the new paediatric pathway has been implemented, the paediatric waiting list has been successfully brought within best practice timelines,” he said.