A few months.
Frequency of eye tests is a bit of a sore point for me.
I always used to be on a 12-month recall for NHS eye tests, due to a combination of eye conditions that can result in sight loss, and general health conditions that can affect eyes and also lead to sight loss.
A couple of tests ago, citing "new policy" (no change in my conditions), they changed me to a 2-year recall. Understanding that these things change and that sometimes savings need to be made, but feeling uncomfortable about going so long between checks given my various conditions and what I'd always been told about the importance of regular monitoring, I asked about paying for a private test halfway between the NHS ones. I was told no, that would reset the 2-year clock on my NHS eligibility.
So I can either pay for a private test every year, and never have an NHS test, or always have free NHS tests but wait two years in-between 🙄
On the one hand, if the NHS thinks I only need a test every two years, and I've had a (private) test more recently than that, I can see why they might feel it makes sense not to fund a test.
But thinking more long-term, surely it makes sense to allow patients like me to have 2-yearly NHS tests, but also top up to the previous frequency with private tests in-between, given that problems caught sooner are cheaper for the NHS to treat?
I guess they probably wrote up the rules on time-based eligibility without even thinking about what incentives and disincentives they might be creating for patients like me, or other factors were more important. But the result is to financially punish me for doing something that may end up saving the NHS money (i.e. having annual eye tests, like they always used to tell me I needed).
I know it's not huge sums of money, and you could argue that if I can pay for a test every other year, I can pay for a test every year. But they don't seem to care that the rules set up financial incentives that encourage people at risk of eye problems to get checked less frequently. To have something you were previously told you needed reduced, and be told that if you try to top it back up you'll have it taken away altogether, lots of people will just decide to stick with the reduced monitoring. Which means more conditions going undiscovered until later.
(It's been suggested that I could go to one optician for the NHS eye tests every other year, and a different optician for the private tests in-between, but that would mean neither optician having my full records, and also lying to the opticians doing my NHS eye tests about information relevant to my NHS eligibility, which would be fraudulent.)