THE COST OF MONITORING GLAUCOMA PATIENTS BY COMMUNITY OPTOMETRISTS

Glaucoma patients are currently undergoing monitoring by community bas ed optometrists as part of a randomised controlled trial of shared car e. As part of this trial, the costs of monitoring these patients by co mmunity optometrists are being calculated. Data were obtained from eig ht practices for the 1993-1994 financial year. The average 'full' cost of a 40 min appointment was calculated as pound 31.56. The average nu mber of unbooked appointments for the month of October 1994 was 16 per practice, which equated to 12, 40 min appointments. Once the number o f unbooked appointments was surpassed for each practice, an average op portunity cost of pound 54.00 was experienced per appointment. The par ticipating optometrists were willing to accept a minimum fee of pound 26.03 for a small number of patient assessments but this rose to pound 43.16 for up to 100 glaucoma patients seen per annum.