The South East London Diabetic Eye Screening Programme, which is known locally as SEL DESP, is the diabetic retinopathy screening programme for patients aged 12 and over who are registered with a GP in south east London (Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich).
Screening programmes operate on geographical boundaries. If you are outside of the south east London area you can find your local screening programme here.
Diabetic eye screening programmes manage a register of all patients with diabetes living in their geographical catchment area to ensure that all patients are invited for annual screening (or more frequent screening during pregnancy), or suitably suspended or excluded with appropriate alternative management and evidence. The programme seeks to maximise the number of patients attending for screening and if patients do not attend they can contact the administration team at any time to rebook their appointments.
We run daily clinics at several hospital/community healthcare sites and seven high street opticians. Please see the clinics page for more information. All appointments and administration is managed centrally by an administration team based at Guy’s Hospital.
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Retinal screening register and QMS practice focus
The programme maintains a register of all patients with diabetes living in the six south London boroughs. The programme has used QMS Practice Focus since 2007 to receive a monthly register of all patients with appropriate diabetes read code (excluding those who have been coded as having withheld consent to share demographic information with the screening programme). This information is use to identified newly registered and diagnosed patients, and to update address, name and GP changes.
The complete specification for the QMS Practice Focus system including the appropriate read codes that should be used is available on the QMS specification document (Word 80Kb).
GP practice staff are asked to note the following very important information regarding the use of certain READ codes and this system:
Any patient coded at 9nnd “WITHHELD CONSENT TO SHARE DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION WITH SCREENING PROGRAMME” will be permanently excluded from any screening appointments, not just from the data transfer, and you must ensure if using this code that the patient is aware that they have opted out of the screening programme rather than just the demographic transfer to the programme.
We ask any practices that if they use this code to also email the administration team gst-tr.seldesp.admin@nhs.net stating that they have coded X number of patients with this code that month so that we can ensure it has been applied correctly and with the patient's full understanding.
Any patients coded as “DIABETES RESOLVED” will not be invited for screening. This code should be used where an incorrect diagnosis has been entered. Patients who were once, but are no longer in the diagnostic criteria for diagnosis of diabetes, should continue to be invited for screening and therefore should be coded as “DIABETES IN REMISSION”.
Practice staff do not need to individually refer patients to us. Rather, we ask you to spend this time to encourage all your patients to attend for screening and get in touch with us if there are any barriers to attending which we need to know about.
- Screening DNAs are clinical events that need action. Patients can call or email us at gst-tr.seldesp.admin@nhs.net at any time to rebook a missed appointment.
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Routine referrals
We aim to offer all patients an appointment well within three months of referral as per the English National Diabetic Eye Screening Programme standards.
We no longer accept individual referrals unless it is for a patient who you feel has not been identified via the QMS upload or you are having technical difficulties in using the QMS system. Please contact our administration and programme manager at gst-tr.seldesp.admin@nhs.net to discuss this further.
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Urgent referrals
SELDESP is a screening programme. Patients who are symptomatic and require urgent assessment (for example, sudden loss of vision) should be advised to attend eye casualty at St Thomas' Hospital (Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm) or their nearest A&E department.
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Onward referral and treatment for diabetic retinopathy
Patients who are found to be screen positive are referred to a hospital eye service which is closest to the location at which they attended for screening. The hospitals we refer to are:
St Thomas’ Hospital
King’s College London
Queen Mary’s Hospital, which operates a satellite clinic at Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Lewisham Hospital
Princess Royal University Hospital
Patients being referred for diabetic eye disease or another urgent retina condition which is identified as an incidental finding will be monitored and tracked for the duration of the time that they are under the care of the hospital eye service. Patients will be suspended from screening for the duration of the time that they are under the care of a medical retina specialist. Patients attending the hospital eye service for another condition, for example glaucoma should continue to attend for retinal screening and are not suspended.
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Patients wishing to opt out of screening
Patients may make an informed choice to opt out of screening, and are asked to sign a specifically designed form confirming this, confirming that they have discussed this with their GP, and understand the risks.
Opt out periods are one, two or three years. Patients wishing to opt out for three years or longer will automatically be invited for screening after three years, and can opt out again at this point by signing the form. If a patient wishes to opt out please contact us and we will send them a form. If we receive a signed form, we will send a copy of this to their registered GP.
We ask that in all instances the GP discusses this decision with the patient to ensure they have made an informed choice to opt out of screening and understand the risk of not having their eyes screened for diabetic retinopathy, and understand that diabetic retinopathy is a symptomless disease until it is in the advanced stages.
If you receive an opt out form from us signed by one of your patients who you have not previously discussed with this, please contact them to discuss this. We are happy to reverse this decision at any time. Please contact us if you would like us to send out a copy of this form. If a patient has requested a form but they have not returned it they will continue to be invited for screening.