General Ophthalmic services workforce statistics - 31 December 2019

The data is collected for the entire ophthalmic workforce population who perform NHS activity and who are authorised to perform NHS sight tests. There are no concerns over sampling or survey data.

The Central Ophthalmic Payments (Open Exeter) system is the source for these data and contains a workforce module which is maintained to ensure data for all opticians (and payments) are accurate. To enable payment to a practice, NHS England/LHBs require a responsible optician to be within the practice as this individual usually receives the payment for NHS GOS work performed by the practice. It is therefore possible that not all professionals are included on Open Exeter.

Data may be affected by the extent to which the GOS guidelines relating to maintaining lists are followed. NHS England/LHBs may remove a practitioner who has not provided GOS in the past six months from its lists and removing inactive practitioners is through an agreement between NHS England/LHB and the optician.

Data in this report may also be impacted by the transition from the existing payment system to the new provider of Ophthalmic support services. NHS Digital have been unable to estimate what the scale of this may be, but as the transition to the new provider is ongoing the completeness and accuracy of data in the existing Open Exeter system may have been impacted. Therefore, due to concerns around the data quality in this 2019 report, at our request these data are no longer classified as National Statistics.

Rates for ophthalmic practitioners per 100,000 head of population are based on population estimates which are subject to revision. NHS Digital assesses the impact of revisions and revises data in line with the organisation revision policy.

The statistics address user demand for numbers of ophthalmic practitioners nationally and by organisation for England and Wales. Data are used by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Welsh Assembly for workforce planning, to answer Parliamentary Questions and press enquiries. The data are also available for use by NHS organisations, researchers or the public.

Due to changes in regulations, there are breaks in the sub-national time series for England. However, these relate to data prior to 2009 which are not included in this edition. This means, however, that England’s figures in this publication are not comparable below a national level with data included in earlier releases in this series.

Following the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the NHS (Performers Lists, England) Regulations 2013 transferred statutory responsibility for managing national performers lists (medical, dental and ophthalmic) from Primary Care Trusts to NHS England. National performers lists replaced the previous local performers lists.  

Regulations came into effect in England on 1 August 2008, which introduced new lists and rules for Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). As a result, pre-2008 data below England level are not comparable with later years.

The regulations adopted by England in August 2008 were not adopted by Wales and therefore the information for England and Wales are presented in separate chapters in this report. Information relating to Wales are based on the General Ophthalmic Services (GOS) regulations 2005, and time series data are presented on a comparable basis at both a national and local level.

Annex 1 contains further details on the regulations which relate to England. It also includes information on the 2005 GOS regulations still in place in Wales. There is a separate section for general definitions. 

The ophthalmic workforce data are made available as soon as possible after validation and compilation.

All fields of data are published either in the Excel tables and CSV files accompanying this report. Further detailed analyses may be available on request, subject to resource limits and compliance with disclosure control requirements.

These data are collected via a download from the Open Exeter payment system which has no additional burden on the NHS.

The standard NHS Digital data security and confidentiality policies have been applied in the production of these statistics. 

Rates for ophthalmic practitioners per 100,000 head of population for 2018 have been revised, as the ONS mid-year population data for 2018 are now available. 2019 rates use the 2018 population data so may be subject to revision if future reports in this series are produced.  

This section contains comments based on responses from the users listed.  All these users have found the information in the report useful for the purposes stated.

Department of Health and Social Care - These statistics are valued by the Department of Health and Social Care as they are the only published source of ophthalmic workforce information. They are used for workforce planning, answering Parliamentary Questions and monitoring policy.

Local commissioners and NHS service planners can view the size and capacity of the ophthalmic workforce to help inform planning for services in their areas.  Journalists and the public can use the data to understand the level of eye-care provision in their area. Private sector providers (high street practices) may use the publication to understand trends in the workforce and to assist in business planning.

The report is free to access via the NHS Digital or data.gov.uk websites so the majority of users will access the report without being known to NHS Digital.

NHS Digital welcomes feedback on the methodology and tables within this publication via a form on the webpage. Comments and suggestions, stating ‘General Ophthalmic Services Workforce’ as the subject, are also welcome via:

Email:  [email protected]

Telephone:  0300 303 5678

Post:  NHS Digital, 7 and 8 Wellington Place, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS1 4AP