Being in business for more than a century, you could forgive Rawlings Opticians for sticking to older ways of working. Instead, it has moved with the times, becoming a frontrunner in the enhanced optical services game and securing recognition at this year’s Optician Awards.
‘We all know that you can’t just rely on spectacle sales for the sole income for the practice anymore,’ says David Barker, director of professional services at Rawlings Opticians in Croydon. ‘You need to diversify.’
A decade ago, Rawlings realised that optical services in Croydon needed a radical redesign. Local hospitals were being put under unnecessary pressure, demand far exceeded supply and, as a result, care was suffering. In response, Rawlings invested in a host of new equipment, including OCT, started working far closer with local hospitals and pushed for its staff to gain extra qualifications.
Last year, it undertook 1,200 first appointments for enhanced services. Its onward referral rate was only 8% and its overall quality of care was rated as 93.84% by patients.
‘In Croydon, we were one of the very early adopters of services,’ Barker explains. ‘I’m on the Croydon Local Optical Committee and we were quite early on the uptake. I saw it as a good way of developing and promoting the practice.’
And this forethought has served Barker and his team extremely well. After making the decision 10 years ago to invest in enhanced services, Barker recognised that this would entail upskilling staff to a higher level of clinical competence.
‘We were always very clinical, but we were doing it in a way that wasn’t necessarily very beneficial for us,’ he says. ‘Now, all of our optometrists are either doing or have done higher qualifications to provide specialised services. The way we are looking to develop and grow in the future is through a lot more community work with the hospital because they can’t cope with the amount of pressure they’re under.’
Rawlings have been quite lucky, says Barker, as the clinical commissioning group for its area is proactive and keen to ‘get stuff out into the community’.
When asked what he thought Rawlings’ chances were on the night, he answers: ‘I hoped we would win it, but I didn’t expect anything. I took a look at some of the other practices on the shortlist and thought we do the same if not more than a lot of them.
‘But, I certainly didn’t think we had it in the bag. We applied simply because we thought we should get some recognition of what we do in enhanced services.’
Barker, who has worked at the practice for 23 years, and nine other team members came along to the awards. ‘We had a full table, from receptionists to managers, so we were all pretty much there. We could celebrate together, rather than it just be the managers and directors,’ he says. ‘It was a great event.’
The process of applying for the award was very useful as a form of self-assessment, Barker remarks. ‘It makes you think about what you’ve done and when you start writing it down, you realise you that you’ve actually achieved quite a lot. It made us sit down and have a thorough look at what we’ve done in the field. I thought it was a very useful process.’
Since winning, the team have been using the award through the typical channels: ‘We’re all very proud and we have it on show in practice, it’s been on social media and our normal marketing channels,’ says Barker. ‘We’ve also had patients email or come in to the practice to say congratulations.’
For now, Rawlings is looking to hire another optometrist to meet the increasing demand for its services. Barker, however, explains that any prospective employee will have to buy into the practice’s ethos, be willing to take on more responsibility and have a thirst for knowledge and continuous education.
‘If they’re not, then they’re probably not the right person to be working for us,’ he adds.
It is this outlook, and a carefully curated and supported team, that has led to Rawlings’ excellence. If such a philosophy is carried into the future, it will continue to be a trailblazer in UK enhanced optical services.