UK Healthcare: Millions of appointments for common eye conditions placing ‘unnecessary demands’ on struggling GPs, say eye experts

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Adam Sampson, Chief Executive of the Association of Optometrists (AOP) says the current system is “failing patients” and making unnecessary demands on a GP service “already on its knees.”

Transcript

00:00In Wales and in Scotland for years there's been a system of integrating high street opticians

00:09into the NHS system in a proper way. In England we are a bit behind, it's much more of a patchwork

00:19of local contracts so government needs to sort that out as a matter of urgency. More

00:25important government also needs to sort out some basic issues to do with IT connectivity.

00:33Adam Sampson, chief executive of the AOP, said the threat of strikes is the latest wake-up call

00:38that GPs are at crisis point. In the research optometrists shared cases which show that the

00:45current system is failing patients. In one case it was reported that the patient was told by their GP

00:50that an eye ailment was just a virus which would go away. In that case the supposed virus turned

00:56out to be Stephen Johnson syndrome which required urgent treatment. They were then admitted to

01:02hospital. If you go to your local opticians with an eye problem they will have the latest

01:08scanning equipment be able to take very sophisticated 3D video images of your eye

01:17and your underlying health issues. Trouble is once they've got that they can't do anything

01:22with it because there's no IT connectivity between local NHS opticians and the specialist

01:31hospitals to which they're going to refer people. So patients are going to the hospital to have

01:37tests repeated that have already been done. We think of a crisis in NHS as being about hospitals

01:45and hospitals are of course critically important but there is a bigger crisis in primary care. You

01:52have NHS dentistry which is falling apart. You have pharmacists which are under pressure.

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