22 March 2024

FODO member update - 22 March

 
This week:

• Bank holiday opening hours
• More NHS professions raise concerns
• World Optometry Week
• Participate in the GOC Workforce and Perceptions Survey
• Administrative list of qualified practitioners for WGOS
• Other sector news
• Health policy news

Bank holiday opening hours

The FODO office will be closed on 29 March and 1 April. We will reopen at 9am on 2 April. Members can still access out-of-hours support on Friday and Monday by emailing [email protected].
 
The next scheduled member update will be on 5 April unless any urgent updates are necessary. 

More NHS professions raise concerns

The OFNC reported concerns last week about DHSC and NHS England making a very low offer, which would be "another real-terms cut" and "detrimental to the sector and the government's plan to use primary eye care to take pressure off GPs and hospitals and reduce avoidable blindness".
 
This week: The BMA announced that junior doctors have voted to continue strike action; the British Dental Association (BDA) said the NHS would have to increase pay by 25% to stem an exodus of NHS dentists and pharmacists reported financial pressures with many locations risking closure.
 
The BDA said the current NHS dentist activity rate in England was £28 and would need to increase to £35 to "stem the flow of dentists to the private sector in the short term." The BDA also shared outcomes of a survey seeking views on the government's Dental Recovery Plan (DRP). The survey found that 3% of dentists thought it would result in their practice seeing more patients and 1% believed it would help meet the government's goal to provide dental care to all those who need it.
 
Responding to BDA concerns, health minister Andrea Leadsom said the government felt the DRP would help incentivise dentists to stay in the NHS, but it would monitor the impact carefully.
 
This week, a Health Foundation REAL Centre report also notes that NHS England's budget will be 1% lower in 2024/25 when adjusting for a "growing and ageing population".
 
Hannah-Rose Douglas, deputy director for the Health Foundation's REAL Centre, said this real-terms reduction in funding "underlines the challenges for the NHS to improve care when faced with these ongoing funding and demand pressures". 

World Optometry Week

FODO welcomed World Optometry Week (17-23 March 2024) for highlighting the importance of eye health and the role optometry plays in this globally. During the week, FODO promoted advancing optometry and eliminating sight loss. 

Participate in the GOC Workforce and Perceptions Survey

The GOC has launched its Workforce and Perceptions Survey to understand registrants' views of job satisfaction, working conditions, plans, and the GOC overall. Last year, just under 4,000 GOC registrants responded. The survey will close on 22 April. Take part. 

Administrative list of qualified practitioners for WGOS

Legislative directions require NHS Wales to prepare and publish an Administrative List of qualified practitioners (including dispensing opticians).? Practices in Wales should complete one form for each dispensing optician who provides, assists or supports the provision of ophthalmic services within your premises or in a mobile setting.? Submit this information by 31 March 2024. 

If you have problems accessing this form, please contact the Contracts Management Department at [email protected].  

Other sector news

• Applications for the 2024 Scope Eyecare Independent Prescriber Bursary Scheme are open. The scheme supports optometrists who wish to enhance their clinical skills and qualify as independent prescribers. Learn more and apply.
• World Council of Optometry (WCO) launches a new competency framework for optometry. Read more.
• Nockolds continues its OCCS partnership following a competitive tender process. Read more.

Health policy news

Vaughan Gething confirmed as Wales's new first minister
Vaughan Gething has become the First Minister of Wales. His experience includes being the former minister for health and social services (2016-2021) and minister for the economy (2021-2024). During his healthcare leadership, optometry in Wales made significant progress in developing new models of primary eye care.
 
NAO analyses NHS workforce plan
The National Audit Office (NAO) has published its value for money report on NHS England's modelling for the Long Term Workforce Plan.
 
NHS England's plan aimed to increase the workforce by at least 65% over 15 years - 1.4 million FTE workings in 2021/22 to between 2.3 million and 2.4 million FTE workers in 2036-37. It based this figure on using Python (a programming language) to model supply and demand projections for 52 professions across five care settings for each year between 2021-22 and 2036-37.
 
The NAO considered whether the models underpinning the plan work "effectively and whether they operated correctly in a technical sense to generate the projections and other outputs required of them". It also examined "whether NHSE's approach to workforce modelling and the models themselves are a reasonable basis for regular strategic workforce planning".
 
The NAO praised NHS England for its attempt to bring together a complex workforce plan. It found that the model "represented a reasonable technical approach to health workforce modelling, and we were able to replicate the outputs from this part of the modelling."
 
However, the NAO reported "significant weaknesses" and "limitations" in the modelling, and like the IFS previously reported, the NAO also found "the assumptions used in the modelling may be optimistic".
 
The NAO report also noted that manual adjustments were made in the process. For example, the "triangulation process required NHSE analysts to manually adjust domestic education places and international recruitment numbers through an iterative approach to balance supply and demand".
 
Harjit Sandhu, FODO managing director, said: "For anybody interested in workforce planning, this report is worth a read. Modelling the NHS healthcare workforce is incredibly complex because of multiple and interrelated variables and potential scenarios, each of which can have an impact on the entire model. Even the best models can only aid decision-making and should be used with a full understanding of limitations. That is why this NAO report is so essential."
 
Read the NAO report.
 
Waiting times mapped
The HSJ has published an interactive map of RTT waiting time data for England. You can select ophthalmology and ENT as specialities and click on each location for a detailed breakdown. Meanwhile, this week DHSC updated its 'How we're tackling the NHS backlog'," which it originally published in May 2023.

NHS funding for a secure future
John Appleby et al. have analysed NHS expenditure and what they, as leading health policy analysts and economists, feel should be done to meet growing needs in a sustainable way. Read more.