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Planned Care Programme – Ophthalmology

Aim and objective: To enhance the delivery of planned care, by facilitating initiatives designed to improve the management of demand and capacity, promote greater elective activity and address waiting times.

Supporting Innovation

  • Implementation of Once for Scotland Ophthalmology Electronic Patient Record (EPR)
  • Ensure the Ophthalmology Electronic Patient Record project is on track to deliver expected outcomes.Manage project spend.Hold regular meetings with NES Technology (the delivery partner) and submit regular reports to the Scottish Government.
  • Manage ongoing project governance of the project via regular Board meetings (usually every 6 weeks).
  • Support the Medical Device Unit to carry out data mining and migration and upload patient-level data to the EPR.
  • Deliver the EPR across the West of Scotland by the end of 2025/26.
  • Work with the Boards in the North of Scotland to commence EPR implementation.Work with East of Scotland Boards to prepare for EPR implementation in the following year.
  • Work with the UK National Ophthalmology Data Set (NOD) Programme and other partners to deliver high-quality patient-level outcomes to support patient safety and holistic care.

Strategic Priorities: Promoting and implementing sustainable solutions, Improving Quality and Efficiency, Data and evidence and Stakeholder engagement and collaboration.

Board Engagement and Clinical Leadership

  • Lead clinically-led peer reviews in Boards
  • Monitor adoption of recommendations around best practices and evidence based guidance.
  • Conduct 8 peer reviews during the year (2025/26).
  • Work with Boards to ensure clear and efficient hospital eye service (HES) treatment pathways are implemented and maintained,
  • Work with the Scottish Government AHP chief officer to review orthoptic services across all Boards.

Strategic Priorities:  Improving Quality and Efficiency; Stakeholder engagement and collaboration.

Improving Quality and Efficiency

  • Monitor Board cataract activity though use of anonymised surgical data.
  • Monitor increase in Immediate Sequential Bilateral Cataract Surgery (ISBCS) though use of Public Health Scotland’s Discovery Dashboard.
  • Work with Boards to implement the cataract blueprint, including work around ISBCS and immersion training sub-groups.
  • Work with Boards to increase New Outpatient and Treatment Time Guarantee activity.
  • Allocate NTC Capacity for cataract surgery and ensure planned activity levels are successfully achieved.
  • Focus on Referral Management (FORM) – reduce unwarranted variation and avoidable referrals across 5 electronic ophthalmic pathways.This involves a focus on joint decision making between the optometrist and the patient in line with realistic medicine.
  • Work with multi-disciplinary colleagues to seek national agreement for 2 additional ophthalmology referral forms.
  • Hold community optometry educational event to support cataract referrals.

Strategic Priorities: National reporting and strategic oversight, Improving Quality and Efficiency; Stakeholder engagement and collaboration, Promoting and implementing sustainable solutions.

Demonstrating impact through Measurement and analysis

  • Ensure patient level outcomes available across cataract surgery and long term care (LTC) management to help embed evidence base medicine across eyecare services.
  • Publish 1 peer reviewed academic paper during the year (2025/26).

Strategic Priorities:Data and evidence.

Performance monitoring and capacity allocation

  • Work with Boards to identify and implement tailored solutions to enable long wait reduction across hospital eye services (HES), including areas identified for improvement as part of the peer review process;
  • Identify solutions to enable Boards to maximise theatre utilisation, including use of National Treatment Centres (NTC) and Regional Treatment Centres.
  • Carry out performance monitoring of NTC referral management and treatment activity against agreed targets.
  • Work with NTC Leads to implement Scan-for-Safety programme and associated benefits across all NTCs.

Strategic Priorities: National reporting and strategic oversight; Data and evidence.