Vision Express given three-year warning

Vision Express has been give a three-year warning in a disciplinary hearing involving seven cases of dispensing opticians who were not registered or who were registered as students and one of an unsupervised student optometrist.

Last week's fitness to practise case saw VE admit to the eight allegations in a case sparked by an anonymous complaint to the GOC on July 15 2010 about the status of Mehmood Jagani who had been working as a DO while not GOC registered. When this was followed up by the GOC, VE responded on March 15 2011 to this query and provided details of six other employees it had found to have practised beyond their registration or practised as a professional when they were not registered with the GOC. The letter also detailed a separate investigation into a VE employee Savina Patel who, as a student optometerist, was alleged to have carried out unsupervised sight tests.