Many patients who are waiting to be seen in acute hospitals for eye-related problems could be seen, diagnosed and treated in the community, a new report has found.

According to the Primary Care Eye Services Review Group Report, an estimated 60% of current outpatient cases could be moved to the community.

If certain hospital services and waiting lists were moved to primary care services, patients would enjoy quicker access and hospitals would be able to focus more on those who require specialist care.

This report marks the first ever national review of primary care eye services in Ireland. It estimates that there are around 225,000 people with low vision and sight loss, and around 13,000 blind people living in Ireland today.

These figures are expected to increase in the coming years as the population increases and ages.

The report noted that while a significant number of older people experience sight loss, this is often preventable. Where it does occur, it can have a major impact on wellbeing and quality of life.

It also noted that eye care services are already overloaded for a number of reasons, including inadequate capacity to deal with demands, inadequate levels of training and inconsistent policies regarding the provision of glasses and low vision aids.

"The lack of well-developed and integrated ophthalmic services may result in children developing a long-term visual impairment that could have been resolved at an early stage, which could impact on their educational and lifelong development, and adults suffering visual impairment from conditions which are preventable and treatable," the report stated.

It calls for the establishment of primary care eye teams (PCETs) nationwide, which would have ‘highly skilled and high-end medical equipment for the provision of primary care eye services'.

"People need to avail of eye care services locally and for these to be provided in a timely and safe manner. We need to re-organise our services to be able to meet our patients' needs and put in place new models of working. The Review Group has undertaken an in-depth analysis of the existing services in place across the country and has set out models of care and care pathways for the management of most eye conditions," explained the group's chairman, Brian Murphy.

He insisted that the health service can deliver ‘safe, timely, high quality services by moving low risk and diagnostic eye services out of our hospitals and into local primary care settings'.

"We need to provide services to patients that are safe, accessible and of high quality, and to deliver them in more practical ways. For example, in our current services we know highly trained hospital consultants are reviewing patients who can be more effectively seen in local eye clinics. By transferring services to the local eye clinics in the community, we will be enabling our acute eye services to focus on more urgent cases," he commented.

The report can be viewed here