It is, if you'll excuse the phrasing, like double-glazing salesmen charging £30 to come and measure your windows when they're almost guaranteed a sale.
Many people who can't get to the optician will buy their glasses from the nice person who tests their eyes at home, and many won't be able to compare with in-store or online pricing.
Owain
Dispensing unnecessary glasses. Anyone under 16 & folk on certain benefits get a voucher towards specs too. And daftly while the NHS won't pay enough for the test, they do pay enough for the specs.
There are prescriptions you just simply do not need especially if you are young, low plus powers, tiny bits of astigmatism. But in many (probably most) practices (multiple and independent) it's a case of "It's only a small prescription so just pick a free pair and wear them if you find they help....." whether there's any real clinical need or not. (And it's quite rare to find someone with absolutely no refractive error)
We supply wholesale and we do work for places where I can spend all morning processing orders and wondering when i'll come to one of any substance. Especially during the school holidays, making glasses for kids where there's no possible way they could *all* be needed.
Set yourself up in a deprived area and you can get quite rich doing high volume NHS stuff.
They may be able, but they probably won't.
They are opticians who specialise only in home visits and are licensed to carry out NHS domiciliary sight tests (Hence their entitlement to use the NHS logo on advertisements and correspondence)). The requirements for registration to do ophthalmic home visits are at
You only qualify for free home visits if, in addition to a free eye test entitlement, you are unable to leave home unaccompanied because of physical or mental illness or disability. If you don't qualify for a free visit and test 'Outside Clinic will charge you (about £45 I think) for a home visit.
They were taken over by Optimism Health Group in Nov of last year. No indication as to whether this is good or bad yet
Quite a few other opticians will also do home visits (Specsavers for one) however it requires the Optician to invest in some quite expensive specialised portable equipment so not all offer it.
Someone has to pay for all this and the Outside Clinic business model relies upon selling a limited range of spectacles at quite high markup. They don't seem to be particularly aggressive in their sales methods but remember the person testing you has sales targets to meet or they won't have a job.
Unless you are pretty strong willed and happy to tell the salesman to go away I wouldn't have them (or any salesman) in the house. You should certainly have someone with you if you decide to have them visit.
They have been going for about 25 years or so and seem to have mostly fairly positive reviews. They also seem to invest in up to date equipment not just the absolute minimum to satisfy the regulators. However, there is little doubt that if you can get to a normal optician you will have probably have access to a greater range of diagnostic equipment (all the home visit services must have an adequate range of portable equipment defined by the NHS which they must be able to carry into the patients home but in recent times many opticians have installed as standard a wider range of examination kit which you couldn't carry around).
Your will also have a much wider range of glasses to chose from in a fixed site optician and probably at significantly lower prices.
As you are entitled to have your prescription given to you after your eye test if you cant get out you could always get an in home test from Outside Clinic, take the prescription and send them on their way. Then go to a decent on-line suppler and get the specs you want much cheaper.
When I went for my test last September they kept the door locked between patients.
Thanks Peter, excellent info.
Depends on the kit that they have. It is really intended for people who are seriously housebound and so cannot go to an opticians. Mine now has a semi-automatic dalek that does the eye test formulation post Covid.
My mum had an at home eye test when she was housebound. The prescription was no worse and no better than one done by a high street shop.
Anything involving close contact of patient and specialist is seriously weird these days (and probably weirder still now). I had my overdue eyes tested in mid summer when things were a little bit more relaxed.
Yes well, I'd be too. Back when I was a child some home or other remote venues were used for eye tests, if the room dimensions were too small, a mirror was used and a mirror image letter chart was hung behind the patient so they could see it in the mirror. It worked well. Brian
Pressure test maybe? Brian
The advice always is to only go to links from the nhs site itself, as anything on an email could be bogus, but if the link was typed in and it is the same as the one on the nhs site, then its probably going to be OK, but I'm sure they must have an administrator available on the phone, since most of their work could be on people not on the internet. Brian
My local Boots which has been refitted with new optical rooms uses this arrangement, except the mirror image letter charge is a computer screen.
I don't know whether it generates the letters randomly to prevent "cheating".
Owain
That technique is still used in 'proper' venues. Certainly in my local Specsavers.
Anyone have the figure for the minimum distance between eye and chart (using mirrors when needed) to give 'infinity' for practical purposes? I've a feeling not all setups have enough lenght.
Wait for RDS or others for a definitive answer but the convention used to be 20 feet (now 6m) for the Snellen chart. Hence eg 20/20 vision. And the widespread use of mirrors.
Historically testing distance was 20 feet hence the term 20/20 (a letter that subtends summat degrees of arc....or summat....at 20 feet) or nowadays 6/6 in metres. So usually 3m and a mirror.
Presumably test charts had the letters made a standard size designed to work as above but nowadays you can have a screen displaying different sized letters calibrated to the testing distance.
I don't know if there's a stated minimum but there comes a point where a shorter testing distance can be problematic in gaining an accurate Rx.
It's all about cramming them them in and making them look modern though these days.
Not how its done. Mine they had a maximum occupancy of two. One being fitted for glasses in the main showroom part and one being tested. One hard rigid chair for waiting and loads of antiseptic wipes.
They had also replaced the classic manual testing rig with an entirely automated streamlined robotic thing like a cross between a vertically mounted frisbee and binoculars. You could hear it whirring away to itself as it altered which lenses it interposed.
The only bits where the optician had to be close to me was looking at the inside of the retina. Everything else was done at a social distance.
I opted not to have a laser retinal scan this time. That too is done on a no contact stare into this instrument and look at the dot basis.
+1 Not only the NHS - what about the customers! We're being double-fleeced: first they screw our NHS, then they screw us personally, when it comes to having to choose a new frame... (costing hundreds of pounds) ; plus your lenses... (costing hundreds of pounds); oh! and which special coatings would you like? Buying a "special coating to protect against scratches?" Shouldn't that be part of the bloody lenses?
(Time I started using spex-on-line, instead of moaning, here!)
J.
That's not a covid response, the specsavers I went to over 2 years ago (just had the reminder to re-book) had one of them
I'm not one of those who would need to drive to Barnard Castle to check my eyesight. ;-)
I have a brick built block some way beyond the end of my garden, perhaps
30m away, and the pointing on the bricks gives a pretty good indication of how sharp my distance vision is. Something I see each and every day when sitting down having a coffee etc. With no correction, it could be a concrete wall. ;-) With +2 ready mades, I see the vertical pointing but not the horizontal. With prescription and astigmatism correction, all comes good.A couple of years ago, I went to Specsavers after being royally messed about by my previous optician. That had taken over from my original one, who was very good indeed.
I have gas permeable lenses for distance, and add specs for reading. My local branch of Specsavers seemed to actually still do gas permeable lenses at a reasonable price. I'd pretty well run out of decent spares - all acratched. Not surprising given their age.
Decided to get some ordinary prescription specs for distance too - as an alternative. Left the lenses out for 5 days before going for the test. The specs I got have a bit too much 'plus' Pointing on that brickwork no longer pin sharp. But easier to use the computer with.
Got them to prescribe some new hard lenses afterwards. About a quarter of the price of the previous optician I'd left in a huff. And pretty good too.
Well, I got two pairs of plain specs (but with astigmatism correction) for £70 all in from Specsavers. Like anything else you can upgrade to what you feel you can afford.
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