It's heartening to see new fronts opening up in the war with government over fair remuneration for the provision of NHS sight testing in the high street (see news). After many years of optics being fobbed off in its attempts to negotiate a realistic fee for sight testing, a government review has suggested some new ways forward. When the healthcare regulator, Monitor, decided to see if a level playing field existed for private providers to the NHS, I doubt if eye care even figured in its thinking.
That aside, what the review does do is put the subsidy retail optics provides to the NHS in stark relief. It would be a relatively easy task for the optical bodies to commission a report detailing how much high street opticians save the NHS and quantify the subsidy provided and use that as ammunition to secure a better deal. Given the repeated failure to secure higher sight test funding, perhaps it would be a more intelligent approach to suggest corporation tax relief and other benefits. Department of Health negotiators may be more open to concessions that do not directly impact their own budget.
Uppermost within those other benefits would be the right to use the NHS logo. It's quite ludicrous that retail opticians cannot currently use this logo given that the NHS funds around 15 million sight tests across the UK and approaching five million vouchers for optical products. The logo would provide tangible benefits to optical practices and it wouldn't cost the NHS a penny.
