Concerns have been lodged over a grey area of unsettled patient complaints about optical practices amid increasing numbers of grievances.
The Optical Consumer Complaints Service (OCCS) provided an update on its regulating activities at the quarterly meeting of the General Optical Council last week.
The service had been contacted by 2,125 patients in 2011, compared to 1,390 in the prior year. The projection for 2012 was 2,168 contacts.
Patients were now using the internet to lodge their complaint in more than 50 per cent of cases, it said. The most common categories related to prescriptions and service.
The GOC was called on to fill in a grey area of complaints that the OCCS did not have the authority to deal with.
OCCS administrator Richard Wilshin said: 'There are some issues that we could deal with but we do not have the authority to do so. The problem is who can?'
Around half of the OCCS complaints had been settled satisfactorily but for the other half it had been impossible to reach an agreement, Wilshin said. In one instance an agreement had not been reached even though the practice offered the patient a 100 per cent refund. However, another had been settled over the phone with the practitioner and patient on loudspeaker.
Wilshin identified the influence of a flood of optical firms, which in some cases had changed the way practices operated and had watered down communication.
Council members pressed the OCCS representatives for more figures on the outcomes from complaints received.
OCCS chairman David Burt said: 'I am nervous about putting a bunch of stats up that mean very little.'
He added that the emergence of consumer 'ambulance-chasing' lawyers in the UK had skewed the statistics. 'People with a grievance know that they can go and see a lawyer and it won't cost them anything. It is changing our culture,' he said.