National Framework for Action to Promote Eye Health and Prevent Avoidable Blindness and Vision Loss

Key Area for Action 4: Improving the systems and quality of care

Action Area: Service Integration

Victorian Eyecare Service (VES)

With a holistic approach to eye care, the VES was the first step as people engage with the wider health care system. Working in partnership and collaboration with other community providers to provide services for people in disadvantaged communities ensures better outcomes, multiple health and social issues may be present. When a person received a VES occasion of service, practitioners may also identify referral needs for broader health and wellbeing.
ACO, through their work to deliver VES, collaborated with community health care centres, supported residential services, public sector residential aged care facilities, Aboriginal cooperatives, homelessness services, youth justice services and disability services, private practitioners, the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear hospital, Vision Australia, and the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
To complement and extend VES delivery of subsidised visual aids, ACO delivered eye care services through VOS and Rural Workforce Agency Victoria. ACO had an established VOS programme, delivering eye care services to the Aboriginal communities including Orbost, Lake Tyers, Bairnsdale, Sale, Wodonga, Heywood, Wangoom, Halls Gap, Mildura, Robinvale, Echuca, Swan Hill and Dareton.

Victorian Service Coordination Tool Templates (SCTT)

The SCTT suite of templates facilitate and supported service coordination. The SCTT was revised in 2012 and included prompts about eye health checks for screening and assessment. The SCTT supported the collection and recording of initial contact, initial needs identification, referral and coordinated care planning information in a standardised way. Using the SCTT can improve communication between service providers, the recording of information generated by screening and assessment processes, information sharing, and the quality of referrals and feedback between service providers. This can assist service providers to share relevant information to support better outcomes for consumers.
Example of a successful initiative – Victoria
Koolin Balit Aboriginal Eyehealth Advisory Group
To provide advice on Aboriginal eye health in Victoria and support the Department of Health in developing and implementing the Koolin Balit Aboriginal Eye Health Plan, the Advisory Group discussed Victorian Aboriginal eye health as a stakeholder group, with the aim of closing the gap for vision: by sharing successes and addressing challenges in the implementation of programmes and projects related to Aboriginal eye health. Through the Advisory Group, coordination of state-wide activity in Aboriginal eye health was undertaken to avoid duplication of effort.
The Aboriginal Eye Health Advisory Group includes representatives from the following organisations: Australian College of Optometry, Commonwealth Department of Health, Victorian Department of Health and Human Services , Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists, Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, University of Melbourne, Indigenous Eye Heath Unit, Vision Australia, Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, Vision 2020 Australia, Rural Workforce Agency Victoria, Fred Hollows Foundation and the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation.
The Group is extremely active in contributing to high quality eye health policy and identifies and collaborates to improve planning and programmes which are supported by high quality research and data. The group is a leading example of collaboration that brings together a variety of experts in the field to implement change that meets the needs of consumer.

Action Area: Workforce Development – Primary Health Care Workforce

Victorian Eyecare Service (VES)

Through their delivery of VES, ACO provided opportunities for optometry students to work with the diverse VES client base. Private practice optometrists also had opportunities to work in this VES public health optometry space, by signing up as a VES provider in rural Victoria, or by doing sessional hours at ACO.

Vision Initiative

The Vision Initiative provided online training for GPs, nurses, home and community care and aged care workers, and pharmacists. Online delivery provides accessible training options both in Victoria and across Australia.

ThinkGP ‘Common Eye Conditions’

The training module targeted GPs and is available on the ThinkGP website. Health professionals can complete the training for free and receive continuing professional development (CPD) points from the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, the Royal Australian College of GPs and the Royal College of Nursing Australia.

Australian Primary Health Nurses Association – ‘An Introduction to Eyes’

Practice nurses worked in General Practitioner practices providing assessment, screening, treatment care and education to patients from all sections of the community. They are a growing and vital component to the primary health care team, providing a holistic approach to care. Knowledge of eye health and awareness of the need for vision care is of particular importance when nurses are seeing patients with diabetes, depression, the elderly and those in high risk groups for eye disease. CPD points are available for this training.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation – ‘Vision Care’

Nurses and midwives make up the largest health professional group in the world and make a positive and lasting contribution not only to the people they care for, but to the whole community. The Australian Nursing Federation’s (ANF) online education platform for nurses and midwives was particularly useful for remote and rural nurses. The Vision Care module takes two hours to complete and it is accredited by the ANF providing CPD points.

Learning Seat – ‘Introduction to Eyes’

The Vision Initiative has an online training programme that targeted community care and aged care workers with the ‘Introduction to Eyes’.

Pharmaceutical Society of Australia

Vision Initiative Pilot Projects – Eye Health webinar online training

A pharmacy training module was developed with an experienced optometrist and delivered in both webinar and face-to-face formats. A webinar was originally delivered on 15 October 2013 and was promoted as a training programme for pharmacists working within Darebin, Greater Geelong, Greater Shepparton and Latrobe. Promotion of the training was done through the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia – Victoria.