Commercial practices and patient safety in the primary eye care sector
We commissioned Shift Insight to carry out research to explore how commercial practices in primary eye care may affect patient safety, patient experience and the working lives of individual registrants. This work forms part of the GOC’s wider thematic review of commercial practices and patient safety.
The research focused on four areas identified by earlier GOC work:
- booking practices (including overbooking, rolling clinics and ‘ghost clinics’)
- short sight test times
- sales targets and incentives
- price transparency
Fieldwork involved in-depth interviews with four stakeholder groups:
- Individual registrants – optometrists and dispensing opticians
- Business registrants – owners, directors and practice managers of GOC-registered optical businesses
- Non-registered eye care staff – for example, optical assistants
- Patient representative organisations – Healthwatch, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), Thomas Pocklington Trust, SeeAbility and Glaucoma UK
