OPHTHALMOLOGY patients could be sent to the UK for cataract surgery as part of a £1million scheme designed to get through a backlog of operations.
Some Islanders are waiting up to 21 months for the treatment – a situation the Health Minister previously called “completely unacceptable”.
The programme is expected to cost £989,980, according to plans provided to the Health Department’s advisory board by head of access Andrew Carter and planned care lead Jemma Hammond.
It is intended to reduce ophthalmology’s waiting list to under a year.
The Health Department hopes to select an external provider before the end of the year and start the project in the first quarter of 2024, aiming to treat 500 patients.
Director of improvement and innovation Anuschka Muller said the project’s market analysis was complete.
“There will then be the need for a procurement strategy and service specification,” she said.
Under the scheme, patients would be selected from a waiting list and receive a telephone assessment with a UK healthcare provider, making sure that they are fit both to fly and undergo surgery.
They would then travel to the UK with a chaperone, receive tests and surgery, as well as post-operative care, including a pressure check and dressing removal – and be back in Jersey after three days. After a telephone follow-up check, the supplier would pass control back to Jersey’s Health Department.
In the weeks following surgery, tests for inflammation, lens position, as well as eye pressure and vision would take place in the Island.
Cataracts are part of the natural ageing process where the lens in the eye becomes cloudy. It causes patients’ eyesight to deteriorate, with symptoms including blurred vision and colours seeming faded.
Often linked to old age, the condition can lead to vision loss. While the corrective surgery is generally considered safe, it can lead to complications, which the Health Department’s chosen supplier would address.
Last month, Health Minister Karen Wilson said – in response to a written question from Deputy Geoff Southern – that she agreed “the waiting list and the waiting times for [cataract] treatment are completely unacceptable”.
She added that the routine wait in the ophthalmology department was currently at 21 months, with cataract patients making up 90% of those affected.
The department was at the time advertising for a specialist nurse for the second time, she said, after the first job listing did not receive a single application.
