Specsavers co-founder Mr Doug Perkins has made a special appearance to announce Australia and New Zealand’s top-performing practices, which received a medal named in his honour.
The company’s Ipswich store in Queensland and Queenstown practice in New Zealand were crowned winners of the Doug Perkins Medal for their respective countries during an SCC Online Series event on 26 August.
Specsavers Ipswich is led by partners Mr Paul Jewitt, Ms Emma Woolner and Mr Victor Scrooby, while Specsavers Queenstown is operated by partners Mr Aaron Irvine and Mr Leigh Jackson.
UK-based Perkins, who founded Specsavers with his wife Dame Mary Perkins in 1984, appeared in a video at the beginning of the webinar to announce the recipients.
According to the company, the awards were introduced in 2018 aim to recognise high standards of clinical excellence and patient care. Eleven Australian and five New Zealand locations were named as finalists earlier in August, representing the top 4% of all stores.
To determine the winners, a nationwide analysis was conducted using data collected through the Specsavers Professional Benchmarking Initiative (PBI), which aggregates and tracks patient outcomes across the Australasian store network.
The information from the PBI was combined with data from Specsavers’ patient feedback platform, as well as health outcome data from the Oculo electronic referral system.
The criteria included leadership in delivering exceptional patient outcomes, consistent feedback demonstrating the positive patient experience, a focus on education and training, implementation of store processes that have delivered consistent quality eyecare, commitment to accessible eye health and collaboration with medicine.
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