Results

We asked for your feedback on three different ways to provide the Diabetic Eye Screening Programme in Northern Ireland.

We had 268 responses to the questionnaire, with over 80% of responses from our service users, their families or carers.

You told us if you thought each of the options could provide a safe, high quality service.

Those of you living with diabetes told us whether you would be happy to attend each of the options.

You also told us what would be the most important considerations when selecting screening sites.  Whilst this question caused some issues in terms of completion, when we looked at complete answers the most important factors to you were car parking and accessibility.

We analysed all these responses, along with feedback at various events/presentations and letters we received from interested parties.  This full analysis can be found in the consultation report.  As a result we made the following two recommendations

Recommendation 1: Model of service delivery

It is recommended that screening is delivered at fixed sites throughout Northern Ireland.  These should be HSC sites or larger GP sites.  In practice sites are likely to be determined by availability and feasibility of implementation, recognising that access to timely screening is a key requirement for the DESP.

Recommendation 2: Future planning considerations

Accessibility, car parking and public transport links are consistently high ranking criteria for respondents with co-location of services and extended hours of opening appearing relatively less important.  These key factors should be considered when determining screening sites.

These recommendations have now been approved by the Board of the Public Health Agency.  The Screening Team, PHA with now move to put in place a planned implementation process, with a formal project structure to support this.  This will include working in collaboration with the Screening Team in Belfast Trust, Service Users, BSO, HSCB, DoH, LCGs and other HSC Trusts.