DO protests over care for hospital residents

A dispensing optician has written to his MP and the secretary of state for health to protest about the new NHS ophthalmic contract which he says allows mental health patients to 'fall through gaps in the NHS'.

In his email John Snelgrove explained to St Albans MP Anne Main and health secretary Andrew Lansley that he used to provide domiciliary services to a number of mental health patients in NHS hospitals. However, he told the MPs that as a result of the new ophthalmic services contract, primary care trusts would not pay him to see patients on an NHS site. Snelgrove reported that the hospital itself was now obliged to provide eye tests and spectacles or patients must pay for them privately.