CHEC, a community healthcare provider delivering specialist ophthalmology services in partnership with the NHS, recently welcomed Marsha de Cordova, Labour MP for Battersea, to its new site in Wandsworth (Friday 17th Jan 2025) to share insights on how independent eyecare services can help free up NHS waiting times.

Ms de Cordova MP, who is registered as blind, is lobbying for a National Eye Health Strategy Bill in Parliament to improve eye health outcomes, following the launch of her report ‘Changing Attitudes, Changing Lives’, which looked at current barriers to visually impaired people entering the workforce.

Ms de Cordova MP has long campaigned for equal access to eyecare for all, declaring the UK’s current waiting lists for ophthalmology services as ‘an emergency’ in 2024.

She visited CHEC Wandsworth, which opens soon at The Filaments, and met with CHEC’s deputy CEO Matt Currall, Hospital Manager Amy Notschild, Chief Medical Officer Des Breen, and Head of Partnerships for the South Steve Hunkin. Together they explained how the hospital – and the wider CHEC operating model – uses community care and a collaborative approach to reduce local waiting times by treating patients within four weeks of initial referral, and ease pressure on the NHS.

With 30 hospitals and 90 community sites across England, in 2023/24, CHEC consulted over 374,000 patients, with 98% feeling satisfied or very satisfied with the treatment they received.

Matt Currall said of the visit: “It was a pleasure to welcome Ms de Cordova MP to our new Wandsworth hospital, and offer a real-time demonstration and insight into how our processes and support team help to reduce local waiting times for vital ophthalmology procedures.

“As an organisation, we echo Ms de Cordova’s stance on the importance of collaboration between all healthcare providers to ensure equity of access to high-quality care, because in so many cases, it proves to be both transformative for the patient and for struggling NHS services. We welcome the introduction of her National Eye Health Strategy Bill and hope it will be successful.”

Marsha de Cordova MP commented: “It was good to visit CHEC Wandsworth to see how their innovative community-based service model is delivering better eye health outcomes for local people, as well as discuss how a National Eye Health Strategy would aid this work.

“With the NHS under immense pressure and ophthalmology waiting lists eye-wateringly high, it is vital that we look at how we prioritise and deliver eye care, including through a National Eye Health Strategy, to get wait lists down and deliver better results for patients.”of her National Eye Health Strategy Bill and hope it will be successful.”