Don't assume that everyone agrees

A lot has been written in the pages of Optician and elsewhere about the common sense of providing primary health in accessible places such as the high street. The call for just this through the We Are Primary Care move last week was just the latest in a long list. From an optometry perspective it makes perfect sense for a group of well qualified eye care professionals to offer eye services where people can access them. Gone were the days, so we thought, that every referral had to be made through the GP. Even if that GP didn't have the equipment of training to make the simplest diagnosis. Why spend £100s of pounds sending people to hospital or a GP when a condition can be monitored and managed by and optometrists, we all know how little they will work for! Along with the launch of  the We are Primary Care initiative a letter was written to the Times. Representatives of the pharmacy, hearing and optical professions wrote to bring these , well worn, arguments out of the professional sphere and into the general. They wrote presuming general readers would see sense in the arguments. Just days later the responses came. Disappointingly letters from an ophthalmologist and, I presume, a GP appeared shortly after challenging the assertions made. The ophthalmologist said the involvement of optometrists in medical eye conditions has resulted in fragmentation and multiplication of demands that had ended up costing the NHS more than should be the case. A Bristol doctor suggested the public was best kept in the dark and  suggested that they should wait and see if their symptoms became more serious before seeking help. GPs were overburdened and demand for services had doubled. 'More well-intentioned advice from other primary care agencies in the high street will only make things worse,' he suggested. Following that advice may well leave some patients permanently in the dark.