Last October, the president of the National Union of French Ophthalmologists (SNOF) unveiled the results of the CSA/SNOF study regarding waiting periods for eyecare appointments. For the third consecutive year, the survey revealed a significant fall in wait times.

Eyecare appointments are increasingly easy to obtain

Every year, the SNOF orders a survey on eyecare appointment wait times. Carried out in September 2021 by the firm CSA Research via mystery calls made in real conditions, the survey evaluated the patient care situation for residents of metropolitan France. 

The telephone survey was based on a representative sample of 2,627 eye doctors, and 1,978 pages of registered online appointments were also examined. The results showed that the average wait time for an appointment decreased by 16 days. It fell from 42 days in 2019, to 26 days, which represents a 38% drop in two years.

Measures taken by the SNOF have led to positive results

Doctor Thierry Bour congratulated himself on these results, which confirm the positive effects of action taken by the SNOF.

An increase in the practice of delegating certain tasks to assistants, the establishment of organizational protocols and a boom in online appointment booking, have all helped the eyecare sector to reach pioneer status in France. “If we continue in this direction, the issue of wait times for appointments will be resolved within the next two to three years,” the president of the SNOF said.

Thanks to these new approaches, and notably the reorganization of practices to include multidisciplinary teams, there has been a reduction in waiting periods that is almost uniform across the different regions of France.

The SNOF set to continue making headway

Eager to sustain this positive trend and to improve access to eyecare even further, the SNOF has come up with several new proposals.

• Improve the demography of ophthalmologists to ensure optimal cover across France
• Development of care teams that support the work of ophthalmologists
• Development of secondary eyecare practices that use telemedicine, in cooperation with orthoptists
• Increase the offer of appointment slots available at short notice via online software
• Improve optical equipment renewal rates at optician practices

Support for these coherent and useful measures should make it possible to improve wait times for eyecare even more significantly.