Vision 2020 Australia welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Cataract Clinical Care Standard: Consultation draft.
Cataracts are one of the three main causes of preventable blindness in Australia, and the prevalence of cataracts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is twelve times that of non-Indigenous Australians.
Vision 2020 Australia strongly supports the development of clinical care standard for cataract surgery as a mechanism for supporting delivery of appropriate care and improving patient engagement and decision making. It is critical however that that the draft Standard, is developed and implemented in ways that achieve the quality goal without further restricting access to a critical surgical procedure.
This submission summarises the key issues identified by Vision 2020 Australia members and proposes some amendments to the Quality Statements to address these, without limiting the intent of the draft Standard to support clinical quality for the public.