Royal Berkshire Hospital is one of the NHS services across three counties that worked together to reduce wait times for ocular surgery.
Trusts in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire cooperated on reducing the backlog of patients who need eye surgery. The backlog included some patients who had to wait more than six months after referral, and had been worsened by the covid pandemic.
Ophthalmology departments from the trusts worked more closely with one another and pushed for increased surgical activity in a two-week period in January.
More than 700 ophthalmology operations were performed in the two week surge, with Royal Berkshire Hospital, West Berkshire Community Hospital, and the Prince Charles Eye Unit in Windsor completing 315 cataract surgeries, corneal transplants and squint operations across the period.
This represented around 50% more than usual in the same time frame.
Dom Hardy, chief operating officer for Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The past several years have seen us face unprecedented challenges and high levels of demand.
“We understand the impact that long waits can have on the quality of life for our patients. We’re really proud of the innovative work being done by teams like Ophthalmology to reduce waiting lists,” Mr Hardy said.
One-stop cataract clinics were also set up in Berkshire West, where patients were able to be diagnosed and made ready for surgery in just a single visit, and post-operative care was carried out in community practises, away from busier services.
Patient records were also entirely digitised, allowing patients to be treated with greater flexibility.
The reduction in back log has left the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks at 31, with the remainder largely due to lacking donor material.
The trusts worked together as part of the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire West Integrated Care System, a partnership which seeks to improve health care services through collaboration of numerous NHS trusts in the counties.
