On the day that George Osborne continues on his path to pave the way for large pre-election tax cuts by slashing funding and services, it is a useful time to remember that, just as the current changes to education and proposed health care changes offer great opportunity for our profession, they also still are a potential wedge in the door for a privatised future.
Excessive centralised spending may have contributed to our current state, but insidious privatisation will always result in some groups less attractive to profitweering being left short of service. Moves currently under way to highlight the services optometrists can provide, with a high degree of skill and with considerable potential cost saving to, for example, local eye hospital units are to be commended (we ran a piece on the Croydon scheme last week, for example). GP consortia need to know about these schemes and their benefits.
GPs have traditionally been more open to accept our specialism than some of our more exclusive ophthalmology colleagues might be (the 'stick to selling glasses' brigade). It is up to us all to make some noise about our role - I am not convinced we can rely on our AOP union to do this on our behalf, run as they are more as a private self interest group themselves, until a significant change at the top takes place.
It was refreshing to see Nicky Morgan MP raise some points about this in the Commons the other day. She pointed out that the use of optom schemes by GPs was a step forward but that there is a strong argument for glaucoma referral refinement to be joined by other schemes such as acute referral and red eye schemes to be run as national programmes to try and avoid potential postcode service - something the PCTs were particularly good at.
Which finally brings me to the recent College conference at Aintree- fantastic event and one I strongly recommend. There was a 'debate between a GP, an optometrist and an educator (sounds like the start of a good joke!) where the potential pitfalls of a GP consortia led health service were skilfully avoided and general concord reigned. Only one militant voice from the audience pointed out the potential for privatised profitmaking at the expense of services. I do not think this is a lefty paranoia, but a real potential threat to some services that GP will be pleased to pass on to an attractive looking tender.