Skip to main content

Ophthalmic Services: Standards

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN 291435, tabled on 26 September 2019

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve ophthalmology services.

Answered on

4 October 2019

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 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.

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 advises the GIRFT report into ophthalmology, which will contain recommendations for service improvement, is due for publication shortly.