To: minister for health Stephen Donnelly
OAPs need cateract removal surgery in ROI
Employ enough consultant eye surgeons immediately in the HSE to provide sight restorative 20minute surgery to mostly elderly patients and eliminate the need for accessing such surgery abroad.
Why is this important?
Cateracts can effect anyone but they mostly effect elderly people. A cloud grows over the eye making it difficult to see. It only gets worst and the only treatment is surgery. But the good news is that the 20-30min surgery is very effective and the pateints sight is returning to them only days after the procedure. The surgery is 95% successful.
This surgery was routinely performed on out pateints in district hospitals in the 1960s but in recent decades fewer consultants in the public system are available to perform the procedure and so people are left on waiting lists for 5-6 years. You can avail of the cross border scheme. This involves being accessed by your GP and referred to the HSE cateract waiting list, then making arrangements with a clinic abroad that offers this surgery under the cross border scheme, book an appointment with their consultant on the day before the procedure, arranging your travel and accommodation and paying in advance the full amount, approx €2500 per eye, then actually going abroad, some require you have someone accompany you, have the surgery and get paper work completed by consultant and finally sending off same to HSE for about 90% reimbursment 9-10 weeks later. Then repeat the whole thing if you need treatment on a second eye.
This is no way to treat our older people, specially when they are at their most vulnerable.
By the HSE employing more eye consultants the waiting list for cateract removal can be reduced and eliminated and a local, efficient and humane service restored.
This surgery was routinely performed on out pateints in district hospitals in the 1960s but in recent decades fewer consultants in the public system are available to perform the procedure and so people are left on waiting lists for 5-6 years. You can avail of the cross border scheme. This involves being accessed by your GP and referred to the HSE cateract waiting list, then making arrangements with a clinic abroad that offers this surgery under the cross border scheme, book an appointment with their consultant on the day before the procedure, arranging your travel and accommodation and paying in advance the full amount, approx €2500 per eye, then actually going abroad, some require you have someone accompany you, have the surgery and get paper work completed by consultant and finally sending off same to HSE for about 90% reimbursment 9-10 weeks later. Then repeat the whole thing if you need treatment on a second eye.
This is no way to treat our older people, specially when they are at their most vulnerable.
By the HSE employing more eye consultants the waiting list for cateract removal can be reduced and eliminated and a local, efficient and humane service restored.
