Official Update – CHEC Community Ophthalmology Service Extended until March 2027
19 March 2026
The LOC received official confirmation this morning that the CHEC contract to deliver the Community Ophthalmology Service has been extended to the end of March 2027 & will not be renewed beyond then. We received assurances from NHS Dorset that the LOC will be fully involved in planning & developing eyecare services beyond 2027.
We raised concerns about MECS with both CHEC & NHS Dorset & received the following response from the Head of Contracts at CHEC via NHS Dorset on 12th Feb:
‘To confirm, CHEC has not suspended or paused MECs services. We continue to accept referrals and deliver the community MECs service in Dorset in accordance with the terms of our commissioned contract.
As specified within our contractual agreement, CHEC provides an optometry-led community MEC service. We accept appropriate referrals for MECs and manage patients within this pathway. Where patients are not clinically suitable for management under the community MECs specification, they are onward referred in line with agreed clinical pathways and governance arrangements.
There have been no changes to the scope, availability, or delivery of our commissioned services.’
We challenged this as it doesn’t correspond to feedback that the LOC received from our constituents. We didn’t receive a response until we recently followed up. The Senior Manager -Performance and Contracts has agreed to raise this with CHEC at their forthcoming contract review meeting.
Alicia from CHEC also responded to the queries we raised recently, as follows:
I have recently visited UHD and spoke with the Clinical Leads within the Emergency care.
I have been updated that our Indicative Action Plan will not affect MECS nor the services we provide such as Glaucoma Monitoring and referral refinement – all services will resume as usual.
The ‘urgent’ criteria would include things that a Primary Care setting would be able to see – however if deemed more acute, this will always be referred onwards to the Trust.
We are continuing our Contract within Dorset for MECS.
The list that has been provided to UHD are MEC’s providers only. The list you have on your website includes all service providers across Dorset, even those not providing MEC’s – for example, Vision Express in Bournemouth only provide Post Cataract services so haven’t been included within the UHD list.
If there are any practices that have stated they provide MEC’s and are not on the list, please do let me know or they’re welcome to reach out to me and I will update accordingly.
The MEC’s only list is to help provide the Trusts with clarity on the providers within the community, where patients may be best seen rather than in emergency care. We have had success recently with DCH and collaborating further. I will be in UHD on Friday 20th March so will do my best on bringing things in so we can all work in tandem. I will endeavour to speak with someone this Friday regarding the Post Cataract issue and update you.’
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