Vision 20/20 UK Primary Care Group

Vision 20/20 UK Primary Care Group

Minutes of the Meeting of 12th October 2007-10-14

Chaired by Wendy Franks

Present :

Nick Astbury, Mike Brace, Roger Buckley, Andy Cassels-Brown, Wendy Franks, John Lawrenson, Trevor Warburton, Richard Wormald

1)Apologies

Apologies were received from Philip Ambler, Rosie Auld, David Henson, Heather Waterman

2)Welcome and Introductions.

Rosie Auld and Heather Waterman were welcomed to the group. They were unfortunately unable to attend today’s meeting but hoped to join us next time. Wendy Franks thanked Trevor Warburton and FODO for hosting today’s meeting.

3)Terms of reference.

A discussion about the function and aims of the group followed. The group plans to define primary care and produce a dataset of primary eye care conditions and their management to be used by eye care providers nationally. The idea is to draw up standards for practice in primary eye care which can be used for guidelines and audit though it was not the remit of the group to monitor and conduct such audits. The group will draw on existing work. Andy Cassels Brown offered to share with the group a spreadsheet of programmes for commissioning community eye health which he has developed for Leeds. John Lawrenson said that standards could be used to set benchmarks and develop a curriculum for training in Primary Eye Care. Ros Harrison’s programme for training Ophthalmic Medical Assistants at TrentUniversity might also be relevant and would also be consulted by the group.

The lack of funding for the group remains a problem, particularly travelling expenses for members. Nick Astbury might try to take this matter up with the Minister of Health at his meeting with her next week to see if the Department of Health would provide funds.

Richard Wormald and Wendy Franks agreed to draw up a document outlining these terms of reference for the meeting with the VISION20/20UK executive meeting in November. It will be circulated to members of the group before hand.

4) GOC guidelines and prescribing in Optometric Practice

a)Royal College of Ophthalmologists position. The President of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists has made clear that their will not be any endorsement or responsibility for the contents of the General Optical Council Guidance.

b)Peer review process.Roger Buckley reported that the General Optical Council had requested that the group take on the task of reviewing their guidance and keeping it updated. Wendy Franks pointed out that this would mean that the group would need to continue in existence after the initial guidance document was completed. . Mike Brace said that Vision 20/20 would be prepared to continue to support the group in the long term. Guidelines for optometric prescribing produced by Roger Buckley and John Lawrenson will be reviewed and it was agreed that these should be edited to include the evidence base. The process of doing this work could be onerous. Richard Wormald suggested that each of the guidance documents should be reviewed by an ophthalmologist, an optometrist and one other eye care professional. Trevor Warburton expressed concern that that there were fewer optometrists than ophthalmologists on the group leaving them with a disproportionately large number of guidance documents to review. It was agreed that it would be acceptable to delegate some reviews to colleagues. Mike Brace said that the IT resources of vision 20/20 would be available to produce the online Primary Eye Care Guidance. It was thought that the amount of work would need a clinical fellow for 3 months to put the work into the correct format. Wendy Franks and Richard Wormald agreed to approach Richard Smith, Chairman of Professional Standards at the Royal College of Ophthalmologists to ask if the College might be able to fund a salary for 3 months. A possible candidate to do this work was suggested.It was agreed to post one guideline for members to review to test the process.

c)Relationship to existing guidelines. Wendy Franks suggested that the document produced should follow the format of the Do Once and Share Glaucoma dataset. The data set is available on line at doasglaucoma.org.uk and members of the group will look at this and comment on the appropriateness of the format for presentation at the next meeting.

6) Lord Ara Darzi’s report on Healthcare in England

One outcome of the report is likely to be an increase in the number of ‘polyclinics’ – in effect large general practice premises, providing local care. Incorporating eye care into plans for any new polyclinics was considered essential and the group agreed that one of their tasks should be to increase the profile of delivery of eye care health so that it would be included in planning of these new clinics. Richard Wormald told the committee that he and Wendy Franks have sent a plea to the Editor of the British Medical Journal to highlight the need for including eye care health in planning new local schemes for health care delivery.

7) Any other Business

Andy Cassels-Brown reported that he and Richard Wormald were planning a presentation about primary care at the 20th Anniversary meeting of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in Liverpool in May. It was agreed that this was a suitable date to work towards for completion of the initial guidance document. It was agreed that John Lawrenson be invited to speak about the activities of the PCG at the College meeting.

8) Date and time of next meeting:

Thursday 20th December 10am –12 noon. Mike Brace will confirm location.