What really matters to people working in optics? The answer to this depends on who you ask, but there is one theme that recurs and that is about being taken seriously as a sector. Although ‘we’ all know that community optics provides a high quality, excellent value and accessible clinical service, the cross subsidy (which ensures the value to policy makers) colours perceptions about the sector at every level and has done for decades.
It is generally seen as good news that the challenges in secondary care are leading to increasing roll-out of NHS-funded programmes such as Mecs in high street practices. This brings a real opportunity to shift the emphasis away from the cost of frames and lenses to the skills of optometrists and dispensing opticians and the investment in innovation in the optical practice. All optical practitioners play a role in preventing avoidable blindness and can play a much greater role in saving money by keeping patients with minor eye conditions out of hospitals.
But as well as an opportunity, this shift presents many challenges. At our regular panel session at Optrafair we will be examining the tensions between an increase in publicly-funded clinical service provision in community optical practices, and the prevailing business model. If anyone has a question they would like to pose to the panel then please let me know.
Mecs affects all parts of the sector. Without any one body making a lot of noise about it, what I see are consistent and evidence-based messages getting through to policy makers from as many partners as are appropriate for a specific issue; Optrafair’s panel session will be yet another sector-wide platform for sharing information and helping to develop the way forward for Mecs.