Sign inDrifts at Labour Party conference toward greater primary care role for high street audiologists?
Both Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting and Minister of State for care Stephen Kinnock spoke at the September conference on the possibility of private optometry and audiology businesses helping to improve access to healthcare through a shake-up of pathways currently controlled by the NHS.
UK Government ministers have highlighted health referral pathways as areas for action, suggesting that private sector professionals could become integral to NHS care delivery in audiology and optometry.
Speaking at the September Labour Party Conference, Wes Streeting, Secretary for Health and Social Care, underlined his Government’s policy to ensure the right of the patient to choose where they are treated, stressing that local health services will be built up “so it’s a genuine choice”.
“And where there’s capacity in the private sector, patients should be able to choose to go there too, free at the point of use, paid for by the NHS,” Streeting told his Conference audience.
Asked at a New Statesman fringe event to the main Conference how he saw the role of “community” audiologists and opticians in the future NHS, he responded: “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,” adding he thought it “daft” that patients have to be referred by a GP to then be referred on to secondary care. This is a “lack of respect” for trained optometrists, said Streeting.
Three big shifts in health management: community, prevention, digital
© Specsavers
Wes Streeting, centre, with (right) Giles Edmonds, Specsavers’ Clinical Services Director, and (left) Stephen McAndrew, Specsavers’ Director of NHS Services.
At a Specsavers fringe event at the same conference, Streeting’s colleague, Minister of State for Care Stephen Kinnock also pronounced on referral pathways as an action area.
Talking about possible NHS policy shifts, Kinnock 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.”
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.
Source: Specsavers/Labour
