29 November 2024

FODO member update – 29 November

This week:

• FODO membership and insurance
• OFNC update - clinical priority codes
• New economic analysis shows benefit of primary eye care
• UK NSC comments on OCT rollout
• Moorfields wins HSJ innovation award
• At a glance
• Policy update

FODO membership and insurance

We have now emailed all members their insurance renewal prices for 2025. All insured members will pay less per FTE for insurance in 2025.
 
Company members: If you still need to do so, please complete your annual FTE declaration as soon as possible. The primary contact registered to your company's FODO account will have a link to complete this information. If you have any questions or need a copy of the link, please email [email protected]. 

OFNC update - clinical priority codes

NHS England has published new clinical priority codes for GOS contractors in England due to an error in the PCSE system. Therefore, some sight tests, which should not require an early retest code, erroneously require a code to be processed. For the avoidance of doubt, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the optometry profession and the Department of Health and Social Care remains unchanged. Read more. 

New economic analysis shows benefit of primary eye care

Roche, AOP, Primary Eye Care Services (PES) and Fight for Sight have funded PA Consulting to analyse the economic benefits of NHS primary eye care.
 
The Key Interventions to Transform Eye Care & Eye Health report says that more NHS care should be delivered out of hospital, which will help patients and promote the "regeneration of high streets".
 
It reports that the NHS sight test delivers major benefits, with a return of c£2bn for £525m spent by the NHS (£3.83 benefit for every £1 spent based on current GOS fees in England). It also makes conservative estimates on the number of hospital visits that might be saved using CUES, integrated glaucoma services, cataract care and OCTs. It added that if the NHS commissioned these services there would be a net saving of £98m per year. 

UK NSC comments on OCT rollout

As reported last week, NHS England confirmed that optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans would be added to the out-of-hospital diabetic retinopathy screening (DRS) programme. Around 60,000 higher-risk patients registered with the NHS DRS will have access to the scans.
 
This week, the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) confirmed that the phased implementation of OCT scans "will not affect the routine DES pathway". Instead, OCT will be used in the "post-DES treatment and surveillance pathway in England."

Read more. 

Moorfields wins HSJ innovation award

Last year, Louisa Wickham, national clinical director for eye care at NHS England and consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields, explained that NHS England and NHS Digital had launched a Single Point of Access (SPoA) pilot in North Central London and set out details about how it works. This month, Moorfields Eye Hospital won the HSJ innovation award for the SPoA. Read more. 

At a glance

• Elton John has been unable to finish his new album because he cannot see, the BBC reports.
• NHS Business Services is running free CPD. C-110375 will cover common pitfalls with GOS claims in England - record keeping and claiming requirements for post-payment verification (PPV). The webinar is on 3 December at 7pm and on 16 January 2025 at 7pm. Book here.

Policy update

The government is consulting on a new regulatory regime for NHS managers in England. It said its "starting position" is that this should apply "as a minimum" to:

• All board-level directors in NHS organisations in England
• Arm's length body board-level directors
• Integrated care board members

FODO will analyse the consultation on members' behalf. If you have any questions or comments about this proposal, please email [email protected].