Decision details

The HASSC undertook a scrutiny review on local eye care services as Councillors were concerned that the fear of having to pay a high cost for glasses was deterring local people from having regular eye tests, which could mean that many people were missing out on early diagnosis of eye diseases, such as diabetes and glaucoma. As a result of the review HASSC made seven recommendations, which if accepted, will make positive differences to the way eye care services are delivered and in turn, the eye health outcomes of local people.

The Board will be asked to agree the seven recommendations.

The Board supported the recommendations made by the Health and Adult Services Select Committee (HASSC) in its Scrutiny Review report on Local Eye Care Services 2014/15.

Accordingly the Board:

(i)  Agreed to oversee a review by the Barking and Dagenham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) of the local eye care pathway, given that:

·  The current arrangements seemed complex and difficult for patients to understand;

·  It was not clear that everyone who should have a sight test was getting one; and

·  It was not clear to the HASSC that the pathway currently fully promoted choice and control by service users;

(ii)  Agreed to oversee a review by the CCG, which would consider the clinical benefits of community optometrists (high street opticians) being able to refer patients directly to hospital eye clinics and other services, rather than having to do this via GPs;

(iii)  Asked the CCG to consider the benefits of commissioning an ‘Eye Care Liaison Officer’ for local residents, to ensure that people with newly acquired sight loss were provided with support at the point of diagnosis and were signposted to appropriate services;

(iv)  Asked the CCG to consider whether cost-effective improvements could be made to local low vision services, given that the HASSC found that in other parts of London these services were delivered closer to where people lived and provide tailored support to ensure that visually impaired people were able to make ongoing, beneficial use of magnifiers and other equipment provided to them;

(v)  Agreed to oversee a local communication campaign, to be undertaken by the Council’s Public Health Team, which would emphasise the importance of having regular eye tests, whilst also delivering other important eye care messages as part of the future programme of public health campaigns;

(vi)  Considered what options could be used to ‘make every contact’ count and introduced a scheme or schemes to encourage and possibly incentivise parents to arrange an eye test for their child prior to starting school; and

(vii)   Noted that the appropriate Partners and Sub-Groups of the Health and Wellbeing Board would progress the work emanating from the recommendations and would report back to the Board and HASSC, as appropriate, in due course.