Covid-19 Urgent Eyecare Service (CUES) for NHS Hillingdon Clinical Commissioning Group

NHS Hillingdon Clinical Commissioning Group is commissioning a service for the provision of urgent eye care within primary care, utilising the established trained workforce in optical practices, for patients at risk with urgent eye health issues that would have found it difficult to access care, with potential implications for their sight and long term eye health due to the Covid response where hospital ophthalmology departments reduced or stopped all routine out-patient and surgical activity, and were only providing services for high risk patients and emergency care.

The service will provide initial contact, telephone triage, remote consultations and where necessary face to face assessments and management of recent onset symptomatic or urgent ocular presentations who would otherwise present to general practice, hospital services and A&E.

Additional information: The contract for a period of 6 months with a break-in clause at 3 months and 1 month notification is being awarded to secure urgently required clinical capacity to enable an enhanced community response to COVID-19.

Recognising its obligations and responsibilities under the NHS (Procurement Patient Choice and Competition)(No.2) Regulations 2013, the CCG assessed the appropriateness to award the contract directly to Primary Eyecare Services Limited, an optometry federation set up of local optical practices in the community, which has the infrastructure and established workforce in place to mobilise the CUES service within very short timescales necessary in this current climate.