Certificate of Visual Impairment
- On 1 September 2005 the registration form for patients with visual impairment changed. Instead of the BD8, a CVI (Certificate of Visual Impairment) should be used.
- Social Services will only accept a CVI signed by a consultant ophthalmologist as evidence for registration. The terms ‘partial sight’ and ‘blindness’ have also been replaced by the terms ‘visual impairment’ and ‘severe visual impairment’ respectively. In addition to the CVI, two other new documents have been produced by the DH to assist patients with visual impairment.
- Form RVI (Referral of Visual Impairment) is for use by hospital eye service staff and optometrists to alert social services (with the patient’s consent) that a patient has visual impairment and would benefit from an assessment.
- A new low vision leaflet (LVL) has been designed for optometrists to hand out to patients with visual impairment to enable the patient to complete an accompanying form to self-request an assessment by social services. Download it here.
- Social Service Departments should be tailoring the LVL to include information about local self help groups and useful contacts and supplying the modified leaflets to optometrists in their area.