Oliver Tanna-White
04 April 2025
The Dedicated Patient Support (DPS) team is a group of trained individuals at Leightons Opticians and Hearing care who are tasked with responding to patients ocular and auditory needs over the phone. With two established centres in Farnham and Southampton, we can ensure that our patients are answered quickly and given compassionate advice that directs them to the service or product that they require.
Patients regularly report symptoms including sight loss, pain, redness, and flashes and floaters, and it is vital that we are equipped to deal with those situations efficiently. The DPS sensitively manages our patients’ symptoms and communicates directly with our branch teams to help patients reach the right practitioner at the most convenient location and in an appropriate time-span.
The service adapts as we add additional services to the portfolio including myopia control, dry eye clinics, emergency eye care, and colourimetry. We ensure that the DPS service is continually informed of changes to our landscape so that we can impart this knowledge to our loyal patient base.
Ultimately, through DPS we can provide a real and knowledgeable voice to patients without them having to venture out to our practices in person to schedule an appointment. This has been favoured by our elderly clientele who appreciate the accessibility of the service.
We have witnessed some wonderful examples in recent weeks of patients benefitting from prompt management, facilitated by collaboration between DPS and our branch teams.
DPS sensitively manages our patients’ symptoms and communicates directly with our branch teams to help patients reach the right practitioner at the most convenient location and in an appropriate time-span
Benefiting practitioners and patients
As a practitioner, the DPS is hugely valuable to the effective management of our clinics. Our goal is to ensure that patients do not have to visit a hospital facility and face a potentially lengthy waiting time to access care in their time of need. Our practices participate in a variety of accessible urgent eyecare pathways including the Minor Eye Conditions Service, CUES, and our internal private emergency appointment system. This provides patients with choice, and DPS is a key access point to these services for all of our patients.
All of our consultations are driven by our dedicated team of optometrists, with access to the latest diagnostic technology. Our network of independent prescribing practitioners is increasing rapidly, which in turn allows us to provide therapeutic treatment to patients in-house and alleviates the burden on secondary care.
In this respect, the DPS ensures that we can produce optimal patient outcomes through intelligent management of our diary.
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