National ophthalmology workstream: hospital eye services

2. Key Data - Hospital Eye Services ( HES)

Ophthalmology Dashboard - Monthly Management Information:

A national ophthalmology dashboard has been built and will continue to be developed to 'pull together' all available data sets relating to eyecare services nationally and will be accessible to those treating patients and managing HES across NHSScotland from early 2017. Outputs from ongoing work will be added to the dashboard in due course. In view of limited national data capture around specific return procedures undertaken by HES, a monthly management information ( MMI) return was commenced in March 2016. Recently this MMI has been iterated to capture the number of procedures undertaken in cataract-only theatre sessions as well as mixed sessions where the number of cataract procedures undertaken is naturally fewer.

Making a difference: New and return patients

The MMI, to date, is also capturing new and return patient data and consequently the return to new ratio which is higher in ophthalmology than many other specialties due to many patients with long-term conditions requiring life-long review. As work develops towards sub-specialty rich data, the National Ophthalmology Workstream has yet to accurately measure the number of patients attending each of the ophthalmology's sub-specialties, especially those dealing with chronic sight threatening conditions. In tandem with this, information regarding the ophthalmology workforce - consultants and those staff with advanced training working at the higher end of their competences - are also captured. This information is vital to ascertain the number of staff working in each area per head of population and for benchmarking and continuing to drive and spread best practices.

The number of intra-vitreal treatment ( IVT) injections across Scotland and in each health board is also captured and alongside this there is a genuine appetite from consultant ophthalmologists to provide an evidence base and collect and collate outcomes from these interventions.

Table 1 below highlights high level information across HES from existing national data sets.

Reviewing and up-dating these data collected for ophthalmic services are essential in order to provide a robust basis on which to identify the demand for the available capacity and manage this intelligently - the development and use of such data are fundamental to the success of future ophthalmology services.