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facebook.com/opticianonline IN FOCUS Breaking down barriers to healthcare Optegra launched an impact report to encourage work between the public and private eye care sectors. Lucy Patchett reports Healthcare provider Optegra hosted around 60 senior NHS colleagues, business leaders, optometrists, healthcare partners, and members of parliament at an event on October 8 at the UK House of Commons to mark the launch of the Breaking Down Barriers to Healthcare Impact report. Optegra commissioned the report, which aimed to initiate closer relationships between private and public sector eye care, from Patients First Coalition, part of the Purpose Coalition, and has been working collaboratively on the project for the past six months.. In an opening speech, Purpose Coalition chair Nick Forbes said: ‘The Breaking Down Barriers Commission was deliberately created as a way of galvanising and capturing all the experience that you, our members, have developed over the last five or six years. In this report, Optegra demonstrated that you can create social value in addition to the direct benefit of the service that you provide as well. ‘We know there are long standing social challenges in this country. We know that we have an economic productivity problem. We know that we need to do more. But doing more doesn’t always mean action by governments or big public programs, it means we’ve all got to work out how our businesses can contribute and have an impact on our staff, our customers, our communities, and it’s very much in that spirit that each individual 6 OPTICIAN 25 October 2024 Head of optometr y at Optegra, Dr Clare O’Donnell, centre, and colleagues organisation does this work. Constructive engagement with government is really significant in the context of the partnership that the Prime Minister called for: a new partnership between government and industry.’ Speaking at the event, Optegra managing director Matt Pickering, added: ‘Within the UK, we now have 19 hospitals and clinics, employing over 500 colleagues, with the newest hospitals and clinics just having opened in Nottingham and Leicester a few weeks ago. Within the healthcare sector we operate in, we don’t believe patients are getting the best care and the best service. As one of the biggest private eye care providers, we’ve got a responsibility for speaking up, offering solutions and coming up with a blueprint for what the future could look like. You’ve all been invited because you’re in a position to influence change within the healthcare sector.’ Forbes thanked MPs for coming and being part of the conversation around how policy-makers and decision-makers can collectively improve the country and said: ‘Private and independent healthcare providers are not the enemy of the NHS. They can provide assistance and additional capacity, if we think of it as a whole system. Purpose Coalition chair Nick Forbes Optegra has been a very generous partner in terms of the way that they’ve developed their services in those ecosystems at a regional level. It is disappointing that, despite the fact we have a National Health Service, the national approach to commissioning on this is not uniform. I think there is a huge opportunity to learn from each other as part of that wider ecosystem development. ‘It’s very easy to talk about systems, commissioning, contracts, procurement and so on. But at the heart of what Optegra does, every single operation changes somebody’s life for the better. In addition to all the lessons to be learnt around social value in this report, there are some amazing case studies that are really moving. It’s a combination of policy, coordination, collaboration and making a difference, that Optegra has demonstrated in this report that we’re launching.’ opticianonline.net
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Follow us on Twitter @opticianonline IMPACT ROADMAP Founder and chair of the Purpose Coalition, Rt Hon Justine Greening, former state secretary of education, transport and international development, designed the organisation’s UK Purpose Goals around the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Social impact consultancy subsidy, the Patient First Coalition, is said to measure organisations against a set of sector-relevant social impact criteria, based on the 15 Purpose Goals that highlight main issues that need to be resolved to break down barriers to opportunity in the UK. Optegra meets all 15 goals but has focused on implementing company strategies led by six specific areas: right advice and experiences; fair career progression; good health and wellbeing; closing the digital divide, and to achieve equality through diversity and inclusion. The Breaking Down Barriers to Healthcare Impact report outlined Optegra’s impact on the eye care sector and explained how it has developed actions committed to each of these areas. KEY COLLABORATIVE APPROACH Jack Savage, senior researcher at the Purpose Coalition, explained: ‘The Purpose Coalition is a group of businesses, NHS trusts and universities, all purpose-led, all trying to break down barriers to opportunities. All of the coalition partners are unified in mapping themselves against the goals, so it creates almost a unified framework, and they can all work together to improve.’ Savage said that Optegra was the first eye care specialist that the Purpose Coalition has worked with, and it has been eye-opening to see the backlog in eye care specifically and how that affects the rest of the NHS. One of the overarching messages is the need for increased collaboration and partnerships in local areas to tackle issues, both in public and private regions, he said. ‘The idea is to, firstly, map the organisations current social impact in the report and then help them go opticianonline.net Matt Pickering, Optegra MD on to implement the recommendations outlined and map further best practice,’ he added. CREATING A SPARK Pickering told Optician the aim of the report is to provoke conversation and debate within the industry that can lead to positive change and emphasised the breadth of Optegra’s patient network for optimum productivity and provision of cataract surgeries. ‘What we want to do is, initially, to start a conversation around how the NHS and the private sector can work a little bit closer together, perhaps a little bit more The Purpose Coalition’s 15 Purpose Goals private sector, they can often be seen quicker or easier.’ BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE Initiatives outlined in the report under the main Purpose Goals included the Junior Doctor Training Scheme and CPD events, “All of the coalition par tners are unified in mapping themselves against the goals, so it creates almost a unified framework, and they can all work together to improve.” collaboratively. At the end of the day, what’s really important is what’s best for patients. So, we’re just trying to have a conversation about how we can move that forward,’ he said. ‘Over the last 18 months, we’ve widened our footprint over the UK considerably, opening 12 new hospitals, with four in the last year. We want to give access to care to more and more patients. I think the point to remember is that whether a patient goes to the NHS to have a cataract or to the private sector, it’s the same fee cost to the taxpayer. And when the patient goes to the for Right Advice and Experiences; an artificial intelligence assistant, named Iris, for pre and post cataract triage, a new dry-AMD treatment, and a data-led patientoutcome measurement, for Closing the Digital Divide; as well as partnering with the NHS, research and development with the University of Manchester, and academic collaboration through Optegra Eye Sciences at Aston University, Birmingham, for Working in Partnership to tackle social change. Amir Hamid, medical director and clinical lead for refractive surgery at Optegra, told Optician about its Junior’s Doctor Training Scheme, which allows junior NHS doctors to work at their clinics once a week, experiencing volume cataract surgeries for six months. Starting last year, the first junior NHS doctor on the programme was Lava Nozad, who worked with consultant ophthalmic surgeon Alastair Stuart to support cataract surgeries, alongside her main training in the Royal Surrey County Hospital, according to a case study in the report. Hamid said: ‘We wanted them to come into an environment where they were comfortable and they would get something good out of the relationship. We started with one and now we have six trainees altogether. ‘Overall, we aim for at least 11% of all our surgical volume to be performed by a junior NHS doctor. So, with 57,000 NHS patients treated this year by Optegra, that would be 6,000 by them. We’ve learned a lot in a short space of time, and we’re very encouraged by it. The more units we open, the more opportunities there will be, and the more confidence that the NHS trusts will have in us for their trainees to come over for training. •’ 25 October 2024 OPTICIAN 7

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facebook.com/opticianonline

IN FOCUS

Breaking down barriers to healthcare

Optegra launched an impact report to encourage work between the public and private eye care sectors. Lucy Patchett reports

Healthcare provider Optegra hosted around 60 senior NHS colleagues, business leaders,

optometrists, healthcare partners, and members of parliament at an event on October 8 at the UK House of Commons to mark the launch of the Breaking Down Barriers to Healthcare Impact report.

Optegra commissioned the report, which aimed to initiate closer relationships between private and public sector eye care, from Patients First Coalition, part of the Purpose Coalition, and has been working collaboratively on the project for the past six months..

In an opening speech, Purpose Coalition chair Nick Forbes said: ‘The Breaking Down Barriers Commission was deliberately created as a way of galvanising and capturing all the experience that you, our members, have developed over the last five or six years. In this report, Optegra demonstrated that you can create social value in addition to the direct benefit of the service that you provide as well.

‘We know there are long standing social challenges in this country. We know that we have an economic productivity problem. We know that we need to do more. But doing more doesn’t always mean action by governments or big public programs, it means we’ve all got to work out how our businesses can contribute and have an impact on our staff, our customers, our communities, and it’s very much in that spirit that each individual

6 OPTICIAN 25 October 2024

Head of optometr y at Optegra, Dr Clare O’Donnell, centre, and colleagues organisation does this work. Constructive engagement with government is really significant in the context of the partnership that the Prime Minister called for: a new partnership between government and industry.’

Speaking at the event, Optegra managing director Matt Pickering, added: ‘Within the UK, we now have 19 hospitals and clinics, employing over 500 colleagues, with the newest hospitals and clinics just having opened in Nottingham and Leicester a few weeks ago. Within the healthcare sector we operate in, we don’t believe patients are getting the best care and the best service. As one of the biggest private eye care providers, we’ve got a responsibility for speaking up, offering solutions and coming up with a blueprint for what the future could look like. You’ve all been invited because you’re in a position to influence change within the healthcare sector.’

Forbes thanked MPs for coming and being part of the conversation around how policy-makers and decision-makers can collectively improve the country and said: ‘Private and independent healthcare providers are not the enemy of the NHS. They can provide assistance and additional capacity, if we think of it as a whole system.

Purpose Coalition chair Nick Forbes

Optegra has been a very generous partner in terms of the way that they’ve developed their services in those ecosystems at a regional level. It is disappointing that, despite the fact we have a National Health Service, the national approach to commissioning on this is not uniform. I think there is a huge opportunity to learn from each other as part of that wider ecosystem development.

‘It’s very easy to talk about systems, commissioning, contracts, procurement and so on. But at the heart of what Optegra does, every single operation changes somebody’s life for the better. In addition to all the lessons to be learnt around social value in this report, there are some amazing case studies that are really moving. It’s a combination of policy, coordination, collaboration and making a difference, that Optegra has demonstrated in this report that we’re launching.’

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