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Tag: Teeple Optometry

Join us with ongoing COVID-19 safety measures

You may be wondering if COVID related measures have changed at Teeple Optometry. As a health care facility, we will continue to monitor guidance issued by the Ministry of Health and the Ontario Science Table for clinics such as ours.

Here is what you can expect:

  1. Please do not enter if you have COVID or flu like symptoms or have exposure to illness in your household.
  2. We encourage entry by appointment.
  3. Masking is mandatory for all persons entering the office. A medical mask or better is required. There are medical masks available in the office entry.
  4. Persons with an appointment should enter by themselves or with one other caretaker, if necessary, to allow for adequate physical distancing in the office.

Thank you so much for your cooperation in helping our office continue to be a safe space for all!

Updated November, 2022

Update – OHIP Service Withdrawal has Paused

 

The Ontario government has now agreed to formal negotiations with Ontario optometrists to address the chronic under funding of OHIP insured eye care services. As a sign of good faith, optometrists, including all the doctors at Teeple Optometry, are now scheduling appointments for OHIP insured patients.

We are grateful for your overwhelming support for fair funding of eye care during the last few months. We appreciate your ongoing support as negotiations continue and hopefully lead to a successful resolution for everyone. We ask for your patience and understanding as we prioritize our scheduling of patients who have been waiting for eye care in the coming weeks.

The severe under funding of OHIP insured services has not yet ended. If you have not done so already, please visit saveeyecare.ca or contact your MPP and add your voice directing the government to properly fund eye care.

OHIP and Your Access to Vision Care

Recently, you may have seen news about optometrists in Ontario and wondered how this impacts you and your family. Teeple Optometry along with optometrists across Ontario are deeply concerned about future access to professional vision care services

What’s the problem?

For more than 30 years, the Ontario government has failed to adequately fund eye care. For more than 30 years, the Ontario government has refused to formally negotiate with optometrists.

In 1989, the Ontario government paid $39.15 for an eye exam.

Thirty-two years later, in 2021, the Ontario government pays on average $44.65 for an eye exam.

That fee does not come close to covering the office expenses such as staff, rent, utilities, equipment, and supplies required to provide an eye exam.

The level of funding for OHIP-insured eye exams is not sustainable.

How will this affect you?

Unfortunately, those who will be impacted the most are the groups OHIP is supposed to protect; our children, seniors and those with existing eye diseases. If the government continues to ignore this issue, Ontario optometrists will be left with no choice but to stop providing OHIP services starting September 1st, 2021.

This means that any person who is OHIP-insured for their eye exam will not be able to see an optometrist, including those 19 years of age and under, 65 years of age and over, and adults with eye diseases related to diabetes, glaucoma and cataracts.

Ontario law makes it illegal for optometrists to accept direct payment or alternate health insurance for OHIP-insured services. As a result, these patients will simply not be able to book an appointment starting September 1st.

After more than 30 years of neglect, the Ontario government can still fix this before September 1st. They only need to commit to a formal negotiation that will lead to a solution where optometrists no longer have to pay out of pocket to provide an eye exam to OHIP-insured patients.  We are pleading with the Ontario government to act responsibly and avoid any impact to our patients.

What’s our plan?

At Teeple Optometry we are advocating for your continued access to quality eye care. For those of you who may have existing appointments after September 1st, or for those with eye diseases who require frequent monitoring we understand this is a difficult situation. If the Ontario government allows service to be disrupted, we will contact you to discuss an individual plan to ensure your specific health needs will be taken care of appropriately. We plan to keep you updated on our efforts and we are available to answer any questions you may have.

How You Can Help

If you or your family uses OHIP-insured services, and you want to help us ensure access to your doctor is not at risk, we invite you to visit SaveEyeCare.ca to sign an electronic letter to tell our elected government officials that eye care matters to you!

Glaucoma – The Silent Thief

Imagine a thief stealing a little tiny bit of your vision every day, over the course of years, starting with your peripheral vision. Normally, we don’t pay much attention to our peripheral vision and we assume that how we are seeing is normal. A slow, progressive loss of peripheral vision sensitivity is the natural course of the most common type of glaucoma, primary open angle glaucoma, a disease affecting the optic nerve and it’s neurons. It is not until significant damage has occurred to the optic nerve and there is a profound loss of peripheral vision that a person will realize there might be a problem.

It is difficult to understand the value of our ability to perceive the world using our five senses until one of the senses is defective, as those who have lost vision or hearing will attest. Many types of vision loss can be restored using glasses, therapy,  medicine or surgery. Vision loss from glaucoma cannot be reversed, only prevented in the first place. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. It is one of the reasons eye care professionals recommend regular eye examinations.

The optic nerve contains about 1 million neurons that transmit visual information from the eye to the brain. As we age, we naturally lose a few neurons year by year. When this destruction of healthy neurons is accelerated in a specific manner, it is called glaucoma. There are several types of glaucoma but I will discuss just two, primary open angle glaucoma and acute angle closure glaucoma.

The causes of primary open angle glaucoma are not yet completely understood. We know there are several risk factors for glaucoma such as elevated eye pressure, age, family history, ethnicity (such as African-American), corneal thickness, general health conditions, previous eye disease and use of certain eye medications. Glaucoma is not diagnosed with just one test and it can present quite differently between individuals. Elevated eye pressure is not always present and some people will develop glaucoma in spite of low eye pressures. Often glaucoma is diagnosed by observing changes in the eye and eye function over time. During a routine eye examination your optometrist will use special instruments to examine the optic nerve’s structure at the back of the eye for signs of glaucoma. The optometrist will also inquire about risk factors, screen for peripheral vision problems and measure the eye’s pressure. If there are risk factors or suspicious findings, the optometrist will do follow-up testing that might include detailed peripheral vision testing, pachymetry (measuring the corneal thickness), gonioscopy (using a special lens to examine an internal eye structure called the trabecular meshwork) and optical coherence tomography (measuring the thickness of the neuron layer around the optic nerve). Sometimes initial testing neither confirms nor rules out glaucoma and testing needs to be repeated over months and sometimes years to be certain of the diagnosis.

Treatment for primary open angle glaucoma is recommended following diagnosis or with a high level of suspicion or risk of vision loss. The goal of treatment is to prevent further vision loss by lowering the eye pressure to a level where damage to the optic nerve would be minimized. Treatment can involve  prescription eye drops, laser, surgery or a combination of these. Frequent follow-up is important to ensure the treatment is effective in halting damage to the optic nerve. Glaucoma is a chronic condition that requires monitoring, usually for the rest of one’s life.

Acute angle closure glaucoma is much less common and presents very differently. There is a fluid within the eye called aqueous humour that is constantly being produced and drained. The aqueous fluid pressure  “inflates” the eye giving it a normal structure. The aqueous is continually drained through the trabecular meshwork which is located in an angle where the iris and the cornea meet near the front of the eye. If the iris is too close to the cornea, for one of a few possible reasons,  the angle may close, blocking the trabecular meshwork “drain” and the eye pressure then builds up rapidly, sometimes within just a few hours. When this happens, it causes blurred vision and intense eye pain. This is an eye emergency and requires immediate attention by your optometrist, ophthalmologist or emergency department in order to preserve vision. Your optometrist can tell you if you are a higher risk for acute angle closure glaucoma during a routine eye examination.

Don’t allow the “silent thief” to steal one of your most precious senses. At Teeple Optometry, all the optometrists are trained to diagnose and treat glaucoma. Make sure to have regular eye examinations as recommended by your optometrist.

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