You should use your professional judgement to decide whether it is in the patient's best interests to offer remote consultations.

Where you recommend medicine(s) to treat the patient during a remote consultation, you should follow the principles for remote consultations and prescribing³¹.

Care delivered remotely requires a suitable clinical governance framework to ensure patient safety and comparable patient outcomes that support clinical audit.

When providing remote care there should be appropriate direction or supervision where necessary, and a robust plan in place to manage technical issues or unexpected clinical finding(s) which require a transfer of care to an appropriate clinician to complete a face-face assessment with suitable urgency.

You should ensure that the technology and the methodology to deliver care remotely do not compromise patient safety. 

When conducting an eye examination or sight test, the same optometrist should remain responsible for remotely performing the refraction, ocular health assessment and subsequent issuing of a prescription. Where it is not possible or in the patient's best interests to complete the episode of care on the same day, a transfer of care to another optometrist should be made.

You remain responsible for the interpretation and assimilation of all clinical findings required to conclude the eye examination or sight test. This includes utilising automated instruments such as visual fields instruments, auto-refractors, and imaging devices - unless you have made a transfer of care to another optometrist.

Patients should be triaged prior to a remote consultation to ensure they are suitable to receive care remotely and the level of care they receive is not impeded by any needs they may have, including their level of digital access and literacy.