Mandy Rice-Davies is mostly famous for a single quote, ‘well he would, wouldn’t he?’. This is a quote that might be directly applied to last week’s Optician columnist Jamie Buchan of Specsavers Arbroath.
Roughly translated his assertion was a righteous indignation that ‘free or discounted sight tests had to be paid for in the form of an inadequate ocular examination’. I’ll leave aside the mixed terminology, a sight test is statutorily defined and consists of a minimum contracted standard and an ocular examination is, well, what, exactly?
Keen readers will remember that Mr Buchan is listed as retail director of Specsavers Arbroath and does not appear on either the optometrist or dispensing optician register maintained by the the GOC.
Clearly any instance of fitness to practise arising out of clinical practise in that ‘store’ would only impact on him very indirectly, as opposed to directly on the registered practitioners.
As such, I would contend that Mr Buchan is in a very poor position to lecture the AIO on an honestly held belief. In fact, I could go so far as to quote him: ‘My views are no more right or wrong than your views.’
Nevertheless, it is clear that the view from a high street in bonny Arbroath in Scotland is much less ‘smokey’ than that from the average English high street, let alone a Welsh or Northern Irish street.
Scottish practitioners are obliged, in return for a higher sight test fee and the unbounded luxury of repeat fees for further investigation, to engage in a much higher standard of examination.
For example, routine enhanced fundus examination arising from dilation of the over-sixties and the treatment of eye conditions from the prescribing of medicines.
In addition, Scottish practitioners have the unparalleled luxury of planned and targeted CET that has enabled Mr Buchan’s colleague Kenneth Johnston to qualify as DipTp(IP).
Clearly, the Scottish government and Optometry Scotland (including representation from multiple and independent) felt strongly enough that the GOS in the rest of the UK operated such a perverse incentive to limit the scope and extent of eye examinations that it needed radical overall.
This is all the evidence that is needed, apart from the nose on your face, that a business model built entirely on the foundations of a loss-leading one-test-once test and (except in Scotland) artificial cross-subsidy is inadequate and, frankly, dangerous.