Ken Pullum gave an interesting talk to the Keratoconus Group outlining his ideas for addressing the increasing problem of waiting times for appointments.
Not only is this obviously disruptive to patients, it’s a false economy. Ken explained that keratoconus is not regarded as clinically urgent because a delay in fitting a contact lens is not going to affect someone’s life expectancy. However, it greatly affects their quality of life. It starts to appear in late teens, early 20s, and consequently has a dramatic effect on a person’s ability to get started in life and raise a family.
A solution can easily be demonstrated to be cost-effective to the individual, enabling them to start a career and continue in employment when things get difficult; by harnessing the enthusiasm and awareness of community practices. It also benefits the state when the individual can continue working and paying taxes. The alternative is to be dependent on state welfare.