Last year, I wrote about Moorfields Eye Hospital’s proposed move after more than a century of treating people from its main hospital at City Road in Islington. The proposal to build a brand new centre on land at the current St Pancras Hospital site, just north of King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, has now been given the go ahead by NHS commissioners, including Brent CCG.
Brent already has an excellent community ophthalmology service based in Sudbury Primary Care Centre and Willesden Centre for Health and Care that support people at home as well as locally to prevent serious eye conditions. A new specialist hospital centre though will ultimately create the world centre for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of eye disease. It’ll bring together excellent eye care, ground breaking research and the world’s best education in ophthalmology.
This is fantastic news for Brent residents and for around 11,000 people from Brent who visit Moorfields Eye Hospital at City Road every year. The new centre will offer a better patient experience, shorter waiting times and access to the best of modern eye care.
Londoners and people from all over the country have had their say on this proposal. The NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), including Brent CCG, ran a joint public consultation for 16 weeks and during this period about 4,600 contributions were received, of which 1,511 were completed consultation surveys. People fed back through a variety of methods, including emails, discussion groups, phone calls and letters as well as via a virtual assistant on the consultation’s website.
Just under three quarters of responses to the survey (73% of responses) supported St Pancras site as a location for the proposed new centre as it was a central London location and next to major transport links.
Now the proposals have been approved, Moorfields Eye Hospital will continue to include the local community and patients in the development and design of the new centre, including detailed designs for the building and plans for how services will run.
The invaluable feedback gained throughout the public consultation from people in Brent and across the country, will now lead the next steps. Both doctors and other clinical staff with patient representatives will continue to shape Moorfields’ plans. NHS Commissioners will also continue to work with Moorfields Eye Hospital to develop and ensure ophthalmic care is delivered in the best possible way.
