SASPEC

PRIMARY EYECARE (SHROPSHIRE & STAFFORDSHIRE) LTD [SASPEC]

About Us

In order to overcome the technical constraints around an LOC entering into contracts for community eye care services in its own right, and to address the preference of CCGs to contract with a single entity, Staffordshire and Shropshire LOCs have established an LOC company - Primary Eyecare (Shropshire & Staffordshire) Ltd – SASPEC for short.

Use of the LOC Company enables Shropshire and Staffordshire LOCs to put together a consortium of local contractors so that they can all participate in an Any Qualified Provider (AQP) contract as they could do in the past with their own direct contracts. SASPEC is run as a company limited by guarantee, a not for profit organisation run by its directors on behalf of optometrists accredited to the community pathways, with LOCSU as the member to facilitate (LOCSU is itself a company limited by guarantee whose members are ABDO, AOP and FODO).

Each community service an LOC company provides needs a clinical governance and performance lead (CGPL) and a deputy CGPL, with representation from both Shropshire and Staffordshire. Their job will be to oversee the implementation of the service and its ongoing monitoring.

SASPEC has appointed CGPLs for the following Staffordshire community eye care pathways:

  1. PEATS/MECS – Mark McCracken
  2. Glaucoma – Irfan Razvi
  3. Paediatrics/Childrens – Delia Cliffe
  4. Cataract (Pre and Post Op) – John Hollins

SASPEC has also appointed a finance lead – Jaspreet Johal. As finance lead, Jaspreet is responsible for the provision of a high quality financial management ensuring the production of relevant, accurate and timely financial advice and supporting information.

Directors (Staffordshire)

Stewart Townsend (Chairman)
Stewart is also the Information Governance (IG) Lead, with responsibility for co-ordinating the IG work programme.

Irfan Razvi
In addition to serving as Glaucoma CGPL, Irfan is the Accountable emergency officer – trained in and responsible for procedures relating to business continuity and disaster recovery.

Mark McCracken
Together with his role as CGPL for PEATS/MECS, Mark doubles as the Senior information risk owner (SIRO). The SIRO fosters a culture for protecting and using data, provides a focal point for managing information risks and incidents, and is concerned with the management of all information assets.

Directors (Shropshire)

Gareth Hardcastle
Gareth has been appointed as SASPEC’s Caldicott Guardian, whose remit is to oversee the arrangements for the use and sharing of patient information. Acting as the 'conscience' of an organisation, the Guardian actively supports work to enable information sharing where it is appropriate to share, and advises on options for lawful and ethical processing of information. The Caldicott Guardian also has a strategic role, which involves representing and championing confidentiality and information sharing requirements and issues at senior management level and, where appropriate, at a range of levels within the company's overall governance framework.

Teresa Hughes

Ian Milne

How We Handle Your (Patient) Data

Primary Eyecare (Shropshire & Staffordshire) Ltd ("the Company") hold various pieces of information about you relating to community eye care services, including your name and address, and clinical details such as the state of health of your eyes, and copies of any letters we have written about you or received from other professionals, such as your doctor. You are entitled to a copy of this information although there may be an administrative charge for providing it. If you wish to see your records, please contact Alison Lowell, Company Secretary, Stafford Business Village, Staffordshire Technology Park, Stafford, ST18 0TW < [email protected] > and we will respond as quickly as possible. We are required to respond within 40 days. If you require independent advice, contact the Information Commissioners' Office at www.ico.gov.uk.

We adhere to the guidelines of the College of Optometrists and the Data Protection Act and will not pass any of your personal information to a third party without your consent unless there is a clear public interest duty to do so.

We are obliged to provide information to authorised persons within the NHS (who are in turn subject to a duty of confidentiality) if they request this. This is usually to confirm that we have provided the NHS services that we have been paid for, and to improve quality of care.

The Company may use the information to audit clinical outcomes and our performance. This enables us to monitor and improve the quality of care that we offer you. Wherever possible (i.e. if we do not need to know who an individual patient is) we will only analyse trends from anonymised information.

If you have any queries about this please contact us and we will be happy to help.