Community optics can help NHS, says Streeting

Wes Streeting visits the Specsavers stand at the Labour Party Conference

The government’s health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, and its primary care minister, Stephen Kinnock, acknowledged the “critical” role of High Street optical and audiology practices in improving NHS services at the recent Labour Party Conference.

Both were speaking about the government’s mission to transform the NHS through three critical shifts – from hospital to community, sickness to prevention and analogue to digital – and how neighbourhood optics and audiology were critical to achieving that.

Wes Streeting told a New Statesman fringe event: “I do think High Street opticians and audiologists can really help us. I think that we should work with the independent sector on the High Street to improve access to health care and crucially we have got to speed up some of the referral pathways.”

Stephen Kinnock also highlighted referral pathways as an action area at a Specsavers fringe event at the conference, which focused on how primary care could support NHS recovery. He also set out a vision of neighbourhood health care networks, with optics and audiology being integral to the delivery of NHS care closer to home to help address the NHS ophthalmology backlog.

Specsavers fringe event

Talking about the government’s vision for NHS shifts, he said: “We cannot do this without business, providers like Specsavers and others. We have got to be ready to take on the vested interests if they get in the way of the three big shifts – hospital to community, sickness to prevention, analogue to digital.”

Speaking at the fringe event, Specsavers clinical services director, Giles Edmonds, said the sector was ready and able to do more to improve access to care for patients to support the NHS and that it could be done at pace.

“A nationally commissioned minor eyecare service in England would save millions of GP appointments and A&E attendances,” he said, “while community glaucoma services would ease pressure on hospitals and address NHS waiting lists. Meanwhile, a national primary care audiology service would help reduce dementia risk by addressing hearing loss.”

Giles also highlighted how High Street optical practices already had hospital quality diagnostic technology in their practices able to identify conditions faster – which was at no capital cost to the taxpayer.