Manx Care has turned to a private sector company to cut its waiting list for cataract assessment and treatment.

It will work with a specialist healthcare provider Synaptik to provide consultations, pre-operative assessments and surgery to around 350 of the 1,300 people currently waiting for treatment, with consultations and pre-assessments taking place in February, and surgery in March.

All activity take place at Noble’s Hospital by specialist clinicians provided by Synaptik.

Manx Care’s ophthalmology team has clinically triaged its cataract waiting list and has now contacted many of those patients who may be suitable for this treatment option to offer them an appointment with the Synaptik team.

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Manx Care says the Synaptik team may not be clinically appropriate for every individual on the waiting list, and that this programme of activity will not replace the current activity that is being delivered at Noble’s Hospital. Instead, this will supplement the existing activity being there, increasing Manx Care’s capacity to see and treat patients and thus work to reduce waiting lists more quickly.

Based in Scotland, Synaptik provides a range of medical services to health boards and trusts help them to cut waiting times.

Across the last four years, it has provided 13,775 ophthalmology operations.

Manx Care’s chief executive officer, Teresa Cope, said: ’I’m pleased that we’ve now contacted many of the patients who may be suitable for this treatment option to invite them to an appointment.

’Utilising the support of specialist healthcare providers to increase the capacity that we have here on the island will help us to reduce our waiting lists faster, whilst we continue with our ongoing programme of transformation to re-shape the delivery of health and social care services on the island.

’I hope patients feel reassured that reducing our waiting lists is a strategic priority for Manx Care and they will start to see activity across a number of other clinical specialists soon.’

Manx Care appear to be increasingly making use of private third party health care providers.

Back in August last year, we reported that Manx Care would use the services of two UK-based external companies - Medefer and 18-Week Support - to conduct around 12,500 virtual outpatient consultations and inpatient procedures between September 2021 and March 2022.

Medefer is a private hospital in London. The choice of seeing a Medefer specialist was offered to some patients ’to speed up their treatment’.

Patient referrals will typically be reviewed within two days by Medefer once they have been passed to the team there. In doing so, patients can expect faster access to care.