COMMUNITY AND PRIMARY EYE CARE GROUP

11:00 am, 13th June 2012

AOP, 2 Woodbridge Street, London, EC1R 0DG

Minutes

  1. Welcome and Apologies

RW briefly introduced new members of the group to the existing members, Stella Hornby who joins in replacement of Wendy Franks and who will report back to the Professional Standards Committee of the RCOphth and Stewart Mitchell from the AOP an LOCSU. Matt Broom, new chief executive of VISION 2020nUK replacing Mike Brace was also welcomed. Gokularaj Ratnarajan, HIEC fellow North Thames, was welcomed. Apologies were received from Heather Waterman and Nick Astbury. Robert Harper had still not been formally invited to join and MB agreed to ensure he is invited to the next meeting ACTION MB

  1. Approval of minutes of meeting on 14th December 2011 at St. Dunstan’s.

After several minor corrections to names and typos, the minutes were accepted as an accurate record.

  1. Matters Arising not on the Agenda
  • JL pointed out that he is no longer in a position to “represent” or feedback to the College of Optometrists and undertook to ask the College whether they would wish to have another individual on the group who could feedback. (John Legge??)
  • RW pointed out the inaction on the last minute of the previous meeting that he would write an article on the disintegration of eye care in the NHS to the New Statesman or Spectator. A useful discussion followed on “the elephant in the room” – the renegotiation of the General Ophthalmic Services for England which has become such an enormous eminence gris especially since the developments in Scotland and Wales. The critical publication on the economic evaluation of the Scottish imitative had just become available from the AOP and MB was able forward this to all the committee members. He also agreed to circulate a recent article in the Scottish Times on the subject. There was general agreement that it would be a good idea an article on the issues to be published in the public domain but we also were clear we had to be very sure of our facts before doing so. It was agreed that we should seek independent evaluation of the report by a health economist and AL agreed to see if suitable peer review could be found among the supporters of the UKVS
  1. Map of Medicine

SH and RW have recently attended a meeting with MoM with Beth Barnes of the RCOphth. There still seems to be some uncertainty about how and by whom the care pathways would be used but while MoM were prepared to continue to remunerate us for peer review work, we agreed to continue. SH will update us by email on the work stream in terms of updates and new pathways once we receive notes from MoM after our most recent meeting. She will also check channels of communication between MoM and the CMG work. The web link on the RCOphth site is difficult to find and does not provide easy access to the MoM pathways.

  1. Outstanding Actions
  1. Primary Care Document RW to modify- JB/JL to indicate LOCSU and college role, LAB Orthoptics, HW nursing RJB/RW ophthalmology ( GP and OMP to follow)
  2. Template for collation of information LAB

These two agenda items were taken together. The template was further edited and modifications made as a result of discussion (the latest version attached to these minutes). Some specific input is required on explicit statements of the meaning of “accreditation” and “specialist” status which will be sought from the relevant members of the group. For the narrative section of the previous RCOphth, it was agreed to ask SH to go back to the Professional Standards Committee and ask for a clearer steer on what was now wanted since implications for training and career development have changed since the original primary care document written by Richard Smith.

  1. Invite HIEC fellow RW

Gok introduced himself and briefly summarised the Health Innovation and Education Cluster for North Thames and Essex work he had been engaged with working towards improving glaucoma referral refinement schemes in the region based on the best available evidence and based on the joint RCOphth and College of Optometrists guidance. SM commented that the LOCSU “IOP only” refinement schemes are being commissioned more and more. Concern about the safety of this model is highlighted by GR’s research and it was agreed that a meeting with all interested parties convened with or by the newly relaunched Glaucoma Alliance (RNIB – Steve Winyard) would be a great opportunity to thrash out concerns and reach a consensus on best models for maximising efficiency of detection of glaucoma and reduction of false positive referrals. Similar models will be needed for cataract and AMD. A meeting in September is being hosted by the RCOphth convened by John Sparrow on this topic

  1. JL’s review and Cochrane systematic review RW

The Cochrane review on organisation of care proposed to the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care group – JL to provide brief summary

  1. Invite RNIB to discuss inequity of service AL

AL will invite a member of the RNIB’s CP group to present the findings of their research to the next meeting. SM briefly described the Bradford shared care model which had been functioning since the mid ‘80s.

  1. National Eye Care Steering Group Update

AL informed the group that this had changed to the Department of Health Eye Care Strategy Group and had not met since the last meeting of CAPEC because Elizabeth Lynam had been out of office but would soon be reconvening the group

  1. AOB

a)We still have not recruited a GP to the group and several suggestions were made which L-AB agreed to pursue.

b)RB and JL updated progress on CMG’s stating they had been engaged in updating a number of them and would specifically need input on Conjunctival Pigmented Lesions, PACG and Ocular?? They had invited specific support from expert colleagues on this such as Rupert Bourne on PACG. SH agreed to coordinate the peer review process.

c)RB highlighted the James Lind Alliance Research prioritisation survey and encouraged members of the group to spread the word and encourage participation

  1. Date and Venue of next meeting

11th December 2012 at 11:00 am probably at the RNIB – MB to confirm