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.”
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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.