Diabetic eye screening...

[Sharron1]

No the photos are looked at by experts then posted out .

Mine too.

Results are sent to me by post - don't think the technician interprets the results

Correct Over the years some of the technicians told me the photos look ok but i will get a letter.

 

[Pumper_Sue]

Results are sent to me by post - don't think the technician interprets the results

The technician always shows me the photos and last years as well then tells me I will have official letter in a few days. (After being looked at by hospital consultant)
A couple of years ago he showed me a change he wasn't happy with, he didn't know what it was so went on to explain I would have a letter telling me about an urgent appointment etc., but not to panic as this is the norm.
True to his word that was what happened urgent appointment that took 12 weeks to come through and told after I had been seen that what could be seen was a fluke of nature and the scan was now clear!

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Mine varies from county to county.
Each health service has a different contract with service providers.

 

[Lurch]

Hi. Not visited forum for many moons - never anything new to report: T2 since 2013, no meds, low carb (some exercise!) and normal results every year (all thanks to finding this forum at the time). GP advised me couple of years back NHS has no means to de-register diabetics.

I post now because of the new local eye screening procedure.

Per the NHS in 2022 (still on the website) we diabetics can book our own screening appointments.

No here no more. This year, for the first time in ten years, I wasn't sent the usual polite reminder with a list of participating opticians and invited to book an appointment. I received an officious four page letter telling me I had been pre-booked at a location and time inconvenient to me. None of the four pages offered explanation for the change. I was advised to ring a new 'booking office'. So I did.

Nothing I said helped them trace my records. Not my NHS number, name etc, not even the so-called "patient reference ID". I was miffed at this waste of my time and asked a few questions. Why had the self-booking system changed? No reason. Why can't I book my own appointment to my convenience as per previous years. No longer possible, we do all that for you. So you contact opticians up to 200,000 times (our apparent diabetic cohort) and make appointments that we then have to ring you to change? Yes, you can no longer speak to opticians yourself. So if diabetics cannot make the pre-booked appointment and fail to attend, does the NHS get charged? Vague reply but perhaps no.

I abandoned the call saying I was cancelling the pre-booking and would try to locate the new list of opticians. I found the list online and turned out I had been allocated the first optician on the list, while there was another within walking distance. I'm possibly a cantankerous 70 year old but see no good reason why I should have to catch two buses to a location in the rush hour just because it was convenient to somebody working at a spreadsheet miles away sticking names in appointment lists. After all, even in COVID the NHS didn;t pre-allocate appointments but invited booking on a website. There was at least some choice of time if not venue. Consultants issue fixed appointments but that is different.

I've discovered our local screening programme was contracted in late 2022 and this seems to be the origin of the new central booking office. Now all 200,000 diabetics in the catchment area have no choice but to go through a new booking office, which in my case was a waste of my time because the original appointment I phoned to cancel was re-issued to me by letter yesterday.

Eye screening is an obvious important thing so I have complied each year despite normal blood sugars. But I see no sane sense to the NHS paying for a new staffed central booking office which presumably makes hundreds of thousands of random appointments, then sends the same number of letters requiring each diabetic to ring the booking office to change the appointment, which I imagine many have to do? I suppose I was unlucky they couldn't trace me when I called but they should have had the wits to jot down that I had called and cancelled.

I've written to the local DESP asking for information on why the old system had to change. Did all the opticians compolain and resign? I notice the new list is sparse of the old names that appeared every year in the past.

Something is afoot, methinks, as to respecting diabetes over convenience of bureacracy. But feet are different area of diabetic problem.

Mind, I do have the Hobson's choice to decline being screened.

Lurch.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Hi. Not visited forum for many moons - never anything new to report: T2 since 2013, no meds, low carb (some exercise!) and normal results every year (all thanks to finding this forum at the time). GP advised me couple of years back NHS has no means to de-register diabetics.

I post now because of the new local eye screening procedure.

Per the NHS in 2022 (still on the website) we diabetics can book our own screening appointments.

No here no more. This year, for the first time in ten years, I wasn't sent the usual polite reminder with a list of participating opticians and invited to book an appointment. I received an officious four page letter telling me I had been pre-booked at a location and time inconvenient to me. None of the four pages offered explanation for the change. I was advised to ring a new 'booking office'. So I did.

Nothing I said helped them trace my records. Not my NHS number, name etc, not even the so-called "patient reference ID". I was miffed at this waste of my time and asked a few questions. Why had the self-booking system changed? No reason. Why can't I book my own appointment to my convenience as per previous years. No longer possible, we do all that for you. So you contact opticians up to 200,000 times (our apparent diabetic cohort) and make appointments that we then have to ring you to change? Yes, you can no longer speak to opticians yourself. So if diabetics cannot make the pre-booked appointment and fail to attend, does the NHS get charged? Vague reply but perhaps no.

I abandoned the call saying I was cancelling the pre-booking and would try to locate the new list of opticians. I found the list online and turned out I had been allocated the first optician on the list, while there was another within walking distance. I'm possibly a cantankerous 70 year old but see no good reason why I should have to catch two buses to a location in the rush hour just because it was convenient to somebody working at a spreadsheet miles away sticking names in appointment lists. After all, even in COVID the NHS didn;t pre-allocate appointments but invited booking on a website. There was at least some choice of time if not venue. Consultants issue fixed appointments but that is different.

I've discovered our local screening programme was contracted in late 2022 and this seems to be the origin of the new central booking office. Now all 200,000 diabetics in the catchment area have no choice but to go through a new booking office, which in my case was a waste of my time because the original appointment I phoned to cancel was re-issued to me by letter yesterday.

Eye screening is an obvious important thing so I have complied each year despite normal blood sugars. But I see no sane sense to the NHS paying for a new staffed central booking office which presumably makes hundreds of thousands of random appointments, then sends the same number of letters requiring each diabetic to ring the booking office to change the appointment, which I imagine many have to do? I suppose I was unlucky they couldn't trace me when I called but they should have had the wits to jot down that I had called and cancelled.

I've written to the local DESP asking for information on why the old system had to change. Did all the opticians compolain and resign? I notice the new list is sparse of the old names that appeared every year in the past.

Something is afoot, methinks, as to respecting diabetes over convenience of bureacracy. But feet are different area of diabetic problem.

Mind, I do have the Hobson's choice to decline being screened.

Lurch.

It will simply have been outsourced to a private service provider.

 

[grovesy]

Hi. Not visited forum for many moons - never anything new to report: T2 since 2013, no meds, low carb (some exercise!) and normal results every year (all thanks to finding this forum at the time). GP advised me couple of years back NHS has no means to de-register diabetics.

I post now because of the new local eye screening procedure.

Per the NHS in 2022 (still on the website) we diabetics can book our own screening appointments.

No here no more. This year, for the first time in ten years, I wasn't sent the usual polite reminder with a list of participating opticians and invited to book an appointment. I received an officious four page letter telling me I had been pre-booked at a location and time inconvenient to me. None of the four pages offered explanation for the change. I was advised to ring a new 'booking office'. So I did.

Nothing I said helped them trace my records. Not my NHS number, name etc, not even the so-called "patient reference ID". I was miffed at this waste of my time and asked a few questions. Why had the self-booking system changed? No reason. Why can't I book my own appointment to my convenience as per previous years. No longer possible, we do all that for you. So you contact opticians up to 200,000 times (our apparent diabetic cohort) and make appointments that we then have to ring you to change? Yes, you can no longer speak to opticians yourself. So if diabetics cannot make the pre-booked appointment and fail to attend, does the NHS get charged? Vague reply but perhaps no.

I abandoned the call saying I was cancelling the pre-booking and would try to locate the new list of opticians. I found the list online and turned out I had been allocated the first optician on the list, while there was another within walking distance. I'm possibly a cantankerous 70 year old but see no good reason why I should have to catch two buses to a location in the rush hour just because it was convenient to somebody working at a spreadsheet miles away sticking names in appointment lists. After all, even in COVID the NHS didn;t pre-allocate appointments but invited booking on a website. There was at least some choice of time if not venue. Consultants issue fixed appointments but that is different.

I've discovered our local screening programme was contracted in late 2022 and this seems to be the origin of the new central booking office. Now all 200,000 diabetics in the catchment area have no choice but to go through a new booking office, which in my case was a waste of my time because the original appointment I phoned to cancel was re-issued to me by letter yesterday.

Eye screening is an obvious important thing so I have complied each year despite normal blood sugars. But I see no sane sense to the NHS paying for a new staffed central booking office which presumably makes hundreds of thousands of random appointments, then sends the same number of letters requiring each diabetic to ring the booking office to change the appointment, which I imagine many have to do? I suppose I was unlucky they couldn't trace me when I called but they should have had the wits to jot down that I had called and cancelled.

I've written to the local DESP asking for information on why the old system had to change. Did all the opticians compolain and resign? I notice the new list is sparse of the old names that appeared every year in the past.

Something is afoot, methinks, as to respecting diabetes over convenience of bureacracy. But feet are different area of diabetic problem.

Mind, I do have the Hobson's choice to decline being screened.

Lurch.

Here in nearly 20 years have ever been able to book my own appointment or have a choice of locations. Some of said locations have not even been a Medical.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Here in nearly 20 years have ever been able to book my own appointment or have a choice of locations. Some of said locations have not even been a Medical.

I used to get a letter to book at a local optician.
Now I get sent a letter with an appointment for an in house NHS check.
A quick phone call to the direct line (which can take a while to answer) and it can be changed for a more convenient time, or at a local health centre, but times are a bit more hit and miss at them.
I can see this changing to an outsourced service, NHS pay is getting too expensive for clerical tasks, or maintaining equipment at under utilised hubs.

 

[Lucyr]

Mine works like this where you get send an appointment but you can list your preferred venue with them so they invite you there next year instead of the nearest (which is difficult to get to)

 

[trophywench]

It may of course be only a matter of time, but the Coventry retinopathy service is now run from via an office situate somewhere at or somewhere very near to the main Worcester hospital, which isn't in an already built-up area anyway. Miles from Kidderminster where I lived for 30 years. The office used to be at Rugby hospital, but moved to Worcester a few years ago and my appts just stayed where they were already, a local-ish NHS place nearer but not in Coventry city centre itself, which houses a drop-in GP surgery plus the mammography X-ray place, quite an extensive podiatry service and any number of individual GP practices and some dentistry services - no personal experience of anything else there except the Podiatry clinic who signed me off before Covid so now I only ever need to go there for retinopathy scans. But in the long past I've attended mobile units of various sizes for both retinopathy and mammograms and cervical smears, parked either on carparks (NHS premisesand/or supermarket ones) at various times for various things.