Welcome to the Eye Services Improvement Project

The Eye Services Improvement Project (ESIP) is an innovative research project that aims to develop and apply an evaluative framework that assesses current and potential health system efficiency (with respect to health outcomes) and equity at the clinical specialty level, using ophthalmology as a case study.

The aims include:

• The development of a simulation model to estimate costs and health outcomes associated with total activity within the clinical Specialty of Ophthalmology, incorporating both public and private health care provision.
• Explicit representation of service processes, including primary care referrals, patient preferences for private health care, urgency ratings for outpatient bookings, urgency ratings for surgical bookings, and choice of intervention
• Analysis to predict the impact of modifications to the existing system, including the introduction of a referral pro forma to improve the accuracy of urgency ratings for outpatient bookings, alternative urgency ratings processes for outpatient bookings and surgery, and alternative intervention strategies for conditions within the Specialty.

The ESIP is currently a pilot project to demonstrate feasibility. The pilot study focuses on the treatment of glaucoma in a hospital setting, describing how the organisation and delivery of hospital services for glaucoma patients impacts on disease progresson and outcomes for patients attending the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH).

Full project funding has been sought from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which would fund a combined analysis of the major ophthalmic disorders (glaucoma, cataracts, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy). The full analysis would also be expanded to assess the impact of primary health care services on vision outcomes.

Further details are available via the linked pages on the left-hand menu.