GIRFT Ophthalmology New to Follow up Ratios

Overview

One of the key focuses for GIRFT for 2023/24 is outpatient care. Across a number of specialities data is being collected for new to follow up ratios.

As ophthalmology is the largest outpatient speciality in the NHS we want to be able to add data to the national discussion. We would be really grateful if you could complete the survey and also for you to add any comments you feel would be useful.

What we want to collate is a range for new: follow up ratios by subspecialty to help clinicians to have conversations with operational colleagues at their Trusts and for you all to have this data as you support regional conversations. We will use the data to drive national conversations and recommendations. We want to develop a range for each speciality because we want to build in a bit of flexibility.

Please could you fill in the questionnaire based on your own knowledge of what happens in your department and if you could discuss with colleagues across the region that would be great! We would like to discuss this data in our July CLG so if you could return the survey by the 9^th of June that would be very helpful.

As well as completing the ratios any comments would be very helpful and if you have any questions please ask.

We have used the subspecialties: Cataract, Glaucoma, Medical Retina Diabetes, Medical Retina, AMD, Paediatrics, Neurophthalmology, Cornea, Oculoplastics, Vitreoretinal. 

The estimated time to complete the questionnaire is 5 minutes. However you will need to have the ratios for each of these subspecialties ready, and collecting this data may take a number of days.

Clinically we have wide warranted variation, from glaucoma and MR which have significant numbers of follow up patients, to cataract where the majority of patients seen should be new patients. Please see here some examples of what the ratios might look like:

• For 100 new patients if 1000 follow up patients are seen, the ratio is 1:10 (e.g glaucoma / medical retina)
• For 100 new patients if 400 follow up patients are seen, the ratio is 1:4 (e.g cornea)
• If one new patient is seen for every follow up patient, the ratio is 1:1
• For 100 new patients 50 follow up patients, the ratio is 2:1
• For 100 new patients 10 follow up patients, the ratio is 10:1
• For 100 new patients 15 follow up patients, the ratio is 20:3 (e.g. the GIRFT standard for cataract new: follow up - 85% patients discharged to the community)

The GIRFT Ophthalmology team