An annual review of the General Optical Council’s performance found concerns about the length of time it took to handle fitness to practise cases.
The Professional Standards Agency’s (PSA) 2020-21 review meant the GOC failed to meet standard 15 in each of the past six years.
Despite falling short of meeting the required standard, the PSA acknowledged the GOC had made significant improvements to its processes.
This meant the GOC met 17 out of 18 standards for good regulation in the period from October 2020 to September 2021, which was an improvement on the previous report when the GOC met 16 of the standards.
In the report for 2019-20, the GOC also failed to meet standard 10 for registration, which assessed the requirement of the GOC to maintain and publish an accurate register of its members.
There were three separate, unrelated errors on the GOC’s register, which meant it had not met the standard that year.
Since then, the GOC changed to its processes, which should reduce the risk of error, the PSA said. The PSA was satisfied standard 10 had been met in 2020-21.
Improving timeliness
The GOC welcomed the publication of the PSA’s annual performance review and highlighted it had met all the criteria for general standards, guidance and standards, registration and education and training.
Despite not meeting the fitness to practise standard, the GOC noted it was the only healthcare regulator to have reduced its open caseload of older cases since the start of the pandemic.
Leonie Milliner, GOC chief executive and registrar, said: ‘We welcome the outcome of the PSA’s annual review of our performance for 2020-21 reporting year, and we are pleased to have met all but one of the standards.
‘We recognise we still need to improve the timeliness of our fitness to practise cases and we will continue to work to meet this standard. However, we have made tremendous progress in reducing the number of new fitness to practise cases being opened from almost 60% to less than 25% by filtering out more complaints that could not result in a decision of impairment. We have also made progress in closing older cases, with only 72 cases more than a year old at the end of this performance review period, compared to 117 at the same point last year.
‘Our fitness to practise function is one of the main ways we protect the public and we remain committed to meeting this standard and building upon the positive work we’ve completed so far to meet our strategic objectives of becoming a world-class regulator and transforming customer service.’
In relation to standard 15, the PSA acknowledged the improvements that had been made by the GOC but it said the optical regulator still took too long over fitness to practise cases.
The report stated: ‘The GOC recognises that it needs to improve the speed with which it deals with fitness to practise cases. It has made progress implementing an improvement plan and this is starting to have a real impact. In particular, the GOC has significantly reduced the end-to-end timeliness measure this year, and has brought down the number of open cases in the system.
‘We welcome these improvements, particularly in view of the ongoing challenges associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, looking across the whole review period, the GOC still took too long to conclude its fitness to practise cases. We therefore concluded that standard 15 was not met.’
Filtering complaints
A key part of the GOC’s plan for improvement was to filter more complaints that could not result in a decision of impairment.
The GOC also focused on closing older cases, which notably contributed to the regulator not meeting the timeliness standard in 2019-20. The GOC managed to reverse that increase in 2020-21.
Feedback was sought by the PSA from stakeholders and two of them said there had been significant improvement in the speed of cases, the report found.
However, across the performance review period as a whole, the three key timeliness measures were still generally high.
In 2019-20, the median time from receipt of referral to case examiner decision was 60 weeks and was 74 weeks in 2020-21.
The median time for case examiner decision to final hearing was 67 weeks in 2019-20 and stayed the same in 2020-21.
Receipt of referral to final fitness to practise committee determination or other final disposal of the case was a median time of 120 weeks in 2019-21 and 141 weeks in 2020-21.
The PSA highlighted: ‘The GOC has told us that, while it was able to progress conduct-related cases largely as usual during the pandemic, it did not progress as many clinical cases as it had hoped because of delays in securing clinical records and expert reports. The GOC has also noted it has had problems with witness engagement, particularly with witnesses employed in the optical sector.
‘Despite these challenges, the GOC has been able to prevent a backlog of cases from building up. It has also continued to reduce the number of open older cases. There were 72 cases more than a year old at the end of this performance review period, compared to 117 at the same point last year.’
The PSA said improvements made by the GOC were welcome, especially when it considered the difficulties faced in gaining access to medical records and securing witness engagement during the pandemic.
- To read the full report, visit the PSA’s website bit.ly/3tMp6aA.
