Online GOS submission to launch next week

Practitioners across England will be able to submit general ophthalmic services (GOS) claims online when Primary Care Support England (PCSE) officially launches an electronic process for ophthalmic payments on Monday (28 October).

A number of early adopter practices have been trialling the PCSE Online payment system over the last two months.

Today (24 October), PCSE is reminding practices not to forget to register their user administrators on PSCE Online ahead of Monday, explaining that registration will be important for accessing online payments and statements, as well as the new online Performers List service.

In order to access the new service from Monday, contractors are required to have their main user administrators registered and payments portal users assigned. Once registration is complete and access to the system is given following verification, users will be able to set up access for colleagues in practice and submit GOS claims online.

In addition to submitting GOS claims online rather than sending off paper forms, users will be able to track the process of claims as well as download online statements for payments.

It is believed that submitting GOS claims online will reduce cost as forms do not need to be posted, while rejected claims should not occur as all data is validated when it is entered before submission.

Speaking ahead of the launch, operations director for payment services at PCSE, Karl Johnson, told OT: “The launch of this new online payments service is a major step change for opticians across the country.”

He highlighted: “It moves an old paper-based system into one that gives opticians much better clarity, certainty and efficiency in how they are paid for the work they do. By switching to the online system, it will ensure that the forms that are submitted are correct at the point of sending and opticians will get detailed statements that will show both the work done and the payment they will receive. This will save on the significant costs incurred in having to post forms to PCSE, as well as speeding up the overall process. It will also deliver environmental benefits by reducing the amount of paper being used, which is currently over 20m forms used each year.”

Some practices may choose to move to eGOS through their practice management software (PMS) provider. Currently Optix and Optinet have been piloting their eGOS systems with practices.

Using a PMS to submit GOS claims online means that the details for a claim will be populated directly from the information in the PMS. However, practices will still need to be registered with PCSE Online in order to view and download payment statements.

For more information, visit the PSCE website or telephone its customer support centre on 0333 014 2884.