A year in a general ophthalmic outpatient department in England

Leicestershire is the largest health authority in ^ England, with a population in excess of 830 000 persons.1 The ophthalmic needs of this population are served by a single ophthalmic outpatient department at the Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI), which has an estimated catchment population of 733 000.2

Since September 1981, a computerized ophthalmology index for all ophthalmic patients and patients with eye casualties has been in operation at the LRI. This index has already been described with respect to the orthoptic clinic3 and the eye casualty department.4 In this report, we describe the work of the general clinic, in which mainly adult patients are seen. We thus exclude the outpatient casualty patients, the orthoptic patients, and the pediatric patients, who primarily attend special pediatric ophthalmology clinics.

In the past decade, there has been a revolution in the provision of ophthalmic care in England, which has perhaps passed