Data is a driving force behind many aspects of excellence in patient care. It enables an understanding of the incremental clinical activities that optometrists do to affect best outcomes for patients. It also enables high-level decision-making and evidence-based strategic direction to identify and address specific challenges.
As standard practice, Specsavers creates and disseminates granular data to its optometry workforce, personalised to each practitioner and their store. It has become important for optometrists to understand the cohort of patients they are seeing in particular disease categories and how their detection rates compare to population prevalence. On top of this, additional measures based on specific processes are in place to assist optometrists as they provide their patients with care.
The annual Doug Perkins Medal is awarded to the practice that demonstrates the most consistently high standards of clinical excellence and patient care. This is determined by analysis of data as clinical processes being quantified with points, revealing the most outstanding practice.
For 2020 medal winner Specsavers Ipswich, the data showed many aspects of clinical excellence, but most outstanding were their visual fields testing procedures. On top of this, over 2019 the practice referred 5.3% of patients to specialist care, in line with benchmarks and national averages and registered 35% of patients with diabetes to KeepSight.
Read the full article on our Healthhub website.