The government has issued a rallying cry to the nation to help ‘fix the NHS’ – and ABDO is urging members to have their say.
Launched on 21 October, the government has described its six-week public consultation on the NHS as “the biggest national conversation about the future of the NHS since its birth”.
The public engagement exercise is designed to help shape the government’s 10 Year Health Plan, which will be published in spring 2025 and underlined by three “big shifts” in healthcare:
• Hospital to community
• Analogue to digital
• Sickness to prevention
“The three big shifts will be our key principles for reform and will revolutionise the way people manage their health and access care,” said health and social care secretary Wes Streeting upon launching the consultation. “Our reforms will also shift the NHS away from late diagnosis and treatment to a model where more services are delivered in local communities and illnesses are prevented in the first place.”
In order to collate a formal stakeholder response to the consultation, ABDO is seeking the opinions of its members.
ABDO clinical lead, Max Halford, said: “We are all aware of the huge challenges within the NHS – and the suggested ‘three big shifts in healthcare’ are long overdue. We recognise that there will be opportunities for our members to help in the shift of work from hospital to community, to ensure patients are seen in a timely manner, local to their home and by registered clinicians they know and trust.
“In order for this to happen, we need to ensure that dispensing opticians and their colleagues in the wider eyecare professions have access to digital technologies that will ensure patient data is easily accessed across the healthcare system.
“The government’s key message of a move from ‘sickness to prevention’ means that dispensing opticians could in the future play an even bigger role in their patients clinical care – and we need to reflect our members’ thoughts in our organisation’s response to this public engagement exercise,” Max added.
ABDO is asking members to email their responses in by 5pm on 19 November – to policy@abdo.org.uk
The Association will consider members’ submissions and then submit a formal response to the consultation by the stakeholder response deadline of 2 December 2024.
ABDO’s response will also be published on the ABDO Consultations webpage.
Individual responses can also be submitted via the Change NHS website – which will be live until early next year.