National ophthalmology workstream: hospital eye services

3. The Workstream Aims - meeting demand with adequate capacity

The workstream aims to ensure the delivery of timely, safe, effective and sustainable patient centred treatment to ophthalmology patients across Scotland while ensuring that no patient is disadvantaged at the expense of others. Whilst it is recognised that there is no one size fits all approach, it is important to support rapid improvement.

Stakeholder Engagement

Early and considerable emphasis has been placed on building stakeholder engagement and empowerment. The eyecare community is increasingly proactive and solution focused and working together to deliver increased capacity is essential. This has enabled strong communication and interaction amongst consultant ophthalmologists, managers, information leads and the non-medical clinical HCP team and across a very wide range of stakeholder groups including, for example, Eyecare Scotland, The Scottish Eyecare Group, Optometry Scotland, The Cross Party Group for Visual Impairment and The Scottish Council on Visual Impairment ( SCOVI).

Ongoing links into other national policy areas include the Scottish Vision Care Strategy, Optometry policy including the General Ophthalmic Services ( GOS) contract, Certification of Vision Impairment ( CVI) and the Sensory Impairment Strategy. Regular meetings with the Scottish Government policy lead for optometry and the primary care division has ensured that where possible common solutions have been identified to avoid duplication of effort.