What is GP Diabetic Eye?
In England, the NHS Diabetic Eye Screening Programme (NDESP) aims to reduce the risk of sight loss among people with diabetes by the early detection and treatment, if needed, of sight-threatening retinopathy. More than 80 local programmes deliver screening throughout England.
In order to invite patients for screening, these local programmes depend upon general practices providing them with timely and accurate information about the patients they are responsible for who are:
- NHS patients,
- aged 12 years and older,
- have been diagnosed with diabetes, and
- are to be referred for annual NHS diabetic eye screening.
Patient details (e.g. NHS number, Names and Address) need to be provided so that invitations to screening, information about screening and appointments for screening can be prepared and sent to patients. The GP holds this information in their patient management system and it is here where the information will be maintained in its most accurate and reliable form. Patients move house from time to time and because they must visit their GP regularly to manage their diabetes care, the GP is the most reliable source for accurate notification of change of address, change of GP and as usually follows, change of local screening programme.
Historically, patients have been referred individually using paper-based forms. Audits have shown that manual data entry error often results in 3% of human errors (reading, typing) and manual referrals often result in 6-10% missed referrals and 6-10% missed patient moves.
GP Diabetic Eye is a computer software application that the GP runs within their practice. It produces a practice diabetic screening ‘cohort’ register that is viewed and verified by the practice manager before being passed to the local diabetic eye screening programme in an electronic format that their systems can read.
I’m a GP, how do I get GP Diabetic Eye?
Your local Diabetic Eye Screening Programme will notify you when they want you to provide data using GP Diabetic Eye. As the recipients, they will first ensure that LMC approval, appropriate technologies and all information governance requirements are met. They will address any questions you might have and advise how and when other initiatives such as GP2DRS will fit.