A SPECIALIST surgeon is being drafted in to GWH to tackle eye operation delays.

In March, five patients at Great Western Hospital were left waiting more than a year for a corneal graft. The delicate transplant surgery sees patients’ damaged corneas replaced, potentially allowing people to see clearly again.

The hospital has blamed staffing changes for the long waiting times.

At a meeting of Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group’s governing body yesterday, GP representative Dr Philip Mayes asked what could be done to help patients stranded on the waiting list for over a year.

Paul Vater, chief operating officer, said: “There is a move to bring in a consultant from Salisbury Hospital to carry out specific procedures, which are very low in number but are very complicated.

"The Great Western Hospital wasn’t going to be able to undertake those.

“We will ensure that those waiting continue to be monitored.”

But Dr Mayes questioned why other treatment options weren’t being offered to the stricken patients, asking: “At what point do we say we will take them off the waiting list and give them the option of alternative choice in terms of treatment?

"Should we be offering treatment in other centres if that’s a viable option?”

He cited a recent check into the GWH eye department delays, saying: “What the clinical review was about is whether there was any mechanism to look at if those waiting 52 weeks for particular procedures to be clinically reviewed and some sort of practical alternative offered.

“Just getting someone from Salisbury will still not do it.”

The CCG’s Mr Vater shot back: “We certainly explored all that with Great Western. We knew that Bristol Eye Hospital was not in a position to take those long waits, they’re not accepting any patients into that particular procedure.”

GWH was put in the spotlight over delays in its radiology department.

The CCG has held a meeting with hospital managers over the waits, after the department breached waiting list targets almost 400 times.

There are currently nine vacancies in the GWH radiology team.

Mr Vater said: “Great Western Hospital had a specific problem about its radiology.” A recruitment drive was expected to see new radiologists join the hospital by September, he said.

While radiology waiting lists were a cause for concern, the CCG boss suggested that delays elsewhere in the hospital were beginning to clear after one of the NHS’s busiest winters on record.

“This year has never demonstrated so well the impact across emergency care and elective - planned - care,” Mr Vater told fellow executives.

“Cancellations from December through to mid February took a toll on the referral to treatment waiting times.”

But figures for March and April were an improvement on previous months.

Pointing to the past winter, he added: “That was a very drastic period where elective care did literally go to the back burner.

"That had an impact we’ve never seen before.”