To ask the Minister of Health for a breakdown of the cost savings to the health service from the NIPEARS Plus pilot, which utilised independent prescribing optometrists to manage acute eye conditions in the community.

A novel NI PEARS (Northern Ireland Primary Eyecare Assessment and Referral Service) Plus service, which aimed to build on the successful regional core NI PEARS service, was piloted within the Belfast Health & Social Care Trust (BHSCT) catchment area, from April-December 2023, with a brief extension into 2024 to support Trust with roll-out of encompass.

The service aims included making optimum use of clinically-skilled primary care optometrists, facilitation of appropriate access to eye care for patients with specific conditions rapidly and close to home, and to reduce the number of patients requiring specialist secondary care ophthalmology services.

A total of 841 patients accessed the service during the pilot, generating 1,331 optometry primary care appointments, including follow-up. BHSCT triaged out 628 of the patients, representing 10.6% of 5,914 referrals into BHSCT Eye Casualty during the pilot period (the remainder being primary care intra-professional referrals).

Those patients managed to completion in primary care released 650 appointments in in Eye Casualty, excluding follow up appointments, in the 32-week period of the pilot. This would equate to the release of approx. 1000 appointments annually in Belfast HSC Trust (RVH) Eye Casualty and approx. 330 appointments in the Western HSC Trust (Altnagelvin) Eye Casualty annually.

The pilot cost a total of £85,600 in clinical fees (£90 for first appointment, £20 per follow-up) to community optometry providers. This sum does not, however, reflect administration, validation, and evaluation costs for the pilot, which were absorbed at Trust and SPPG level prior to, throughout, and after the pilot.

The current absence of tariff makes cost-saving analysis challenging, although ongoing work around Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICs) should help to make future comparative benchmarks realistic.

Preliminary PLICs data demonstrates a total of 13,638 attendances at Eye Casualty in the period 2022/23 with a maximum 94 patients per day and an average of 40.