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Over 19 million eye tests are carried out each year in England and about 13 million of these are NHS-funded, to support patients with visual complaints that relate to defects of sight caused by refractive error.
In addition, people with eye related conditions account for 5 million GP consultations and 270,000 A&E attendances per year. An eye health check has become a common occurrence and demand for hospital optical services has increased by 8% in the past two years, adding to capacity pressures for the NHS.
Specsavers is helping to reduce that pressure on our healthcare system by offering eye health appointments, carrying out 1.3 million in 2024 alone.
Our OCT scans, which are available to add on to any eye test, are also working hard to identify potential health concerns as early as possible.
Eye related conditions are a growing issue that the RNIB is also keen to see addressed:
“We are facing an extremely challenging time for eye health in the UK. We are pressing for integrated services and effective referral and treatment for local communities as a key way of tackling the capacity problems in hospital eye departments.”
Helen Lee, RNIB
Optical services, such as emergency eye tests and urgent care appointments, form an integral part of primary care and will need to be utilised if the NHS is to meet the needs of an ageing population.
This needs to be done whilst improving efficiency, enhancing results, and lowering the overall cost of eye care and general optical services so that both eye health appointments, emergency opticians appointments, and emergency eye tests are available to everyone across the country.
The benefits of community optometry for patients and GPs:
- Patients have access to aftercare services as and when required
- Convenient community based locations, with extended opening hours
- All examinations carried out by qualified, accredited optometrists, using all relevant diagnostic equipment
Collectively the 140,000 days currently spent by GPs on eye-related queries, such as emergency eye tests and urgent eye health appointments, could be dealt with by community optometrists. As a result the equivalent of more than 500 extra full time GPs could be freed up.
The commissioning of urgent care appointments significantly impacts on referral rates to secondary care, reducing the 1.7 million first attendances at ophthalmology outpatients by at least 10%; the equivalent of 170,000 NHS Hospital Eye Service (HES) appointments and net savings of £5.5million.
Urgent care appointments
These following symptoms should be signposted for an urgent care appointments, rather than a sight test:
Your patients can discover more information on eye health checks here:
Need an emergency eye test? Find your nearest store and give us a call or pop in
How to refer your patients
In areas of the country where Specsavers has been contracted to provide Enhanced Optical Services for urgent care appointments on behalf of the NHS, patients can self refer into the optical service without the need for a GP referral.
Where NHS contracts are not in place, Specsavers offers private Eye Health Clinics for urgent care appointments, again on a self-referral basis.
Give your nearest Specsavers store a call to find out what services they can offer.
Eye tests at home
Does your patient have a physical or mental disability that prevents them from getting to one of our stores for an urgent care appointment?
With Specsavers Home Visits, eligible customers can have a full eye health check at home or in their care home with one of our home-visiting opticians near you.
What’s more, should they need glasses, they’ll be able to choose from hundreds of styles and take advantage of the same offers that they’d find in store.
More information on home visits can be found here: