Specsavers focuses on clinical outcomes reporting

Holding aloft the flag of clinical services for optometry and hoping everyone else would follow was a nice idea but it is not going to happen, says Doug Perkins, chairman and co-founder of Specsavers. His reference was to the plea he made at Optrafair. In the absence of a cohesive, pan-profession push for access to ophthalmology he says Specsavers has decided to build an evidence base to convince ophthalmology of optometry’s worth through clinical outcome reporting.

‘Tracking outcomes of clinical interaction has been done for years in other areas but in optometry it’s a pretty new thing,’ says Giles Edmonds, clinical services director of Specsavers. That is exactly what Specsavers has built through its clinical outcomes reporting that is now live in 600 stores. The idea is to generate data on things like referral reporting to help build better relationships with ophthalmologists.