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Cataract care is mobile

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
MrSimon P Kelly
FRCOphth, Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust, Bolton BL4 0JR, UK

Keywords: cataract

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Ophthalmologists found themselves in the vanguard of recent government policy to deploy overseas clinical teams (OCTs) in three mobile cataract treatment units touring England. These were announced in the first of two Department of Health (DoH) initiatives in England, titled Wave 1 and Wave 2, to augment clinical capacity. Since 2004 independent sector treatment centres (IS-TCs) have been mostly, but not exclusively, in schemes approved by the National Implementation Team (NIT), which is composed of special advisers to the Commercial Directorate of the DoH. Non-NIT schemes involving OCTs date back to 2002. The Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOphth), and others, raised concerns at the outset of the scheme when it was announced that 44 000 cataract operations would be undertaken in the mobile units over 5 years. Clinical and conceptual concerns (box) were mostly ignored. Implementation rather than consideration of policy has been the mantra. Some concerns have . . . [Full text of this article]

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