My 65 year old DH went to his opticians in August last year as the sight in one eye was blurry they diagnosed a cataract but told him nothing could be done until he had one in BOTH eyes and to come back in a year.
At the end of November it was getting a lot worse so he went back for another exam, they refused to do this on the NHS and told him he had to pay £21 or get referral from his GP, even though (as I found later) they can do an extra check paid for by the NHS if its clinically necessary and I would have thought that a worsening cataract and type 2 diabetes (which they knew about) would have fallen into that category.
So I looked on the NHS choices website and the RNIB website and both sites say that cataract ops can be done in any stage and both eyes don't need to be affected before surgery is offered, I also checked with our local PCT and they don't have any financial restrictions on 'minor surgery'.
Armed with these facts and evidence that his quality of life and work is affected (he works P/T in a charity shop and he is restricted in what he can do (he had to have a risk assessment by the manager) we bypassed the optician and went straight to our GP for a referral which our GP agreed to.
Whilst we were waiting for the referral DH had his yearly retina scan for his diabetes and that failed, so another referral to the eye clinic was made by the scan technician.
He had his appoint yesterday and was told his cataract was a 'bad' one and will have the op to replace the lens he was also warned that when one eye goes the other will go sometime in the future but NOT that both eyes need to be affected before surgery can be done
Why exactly are high street opticians (who are really a business and not part of the NHS) making themselves the guardians of NHS services.
BTW in January this year DH was sent a flyer from the same opticians that told him your NHS sight test is now due WFT???????