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• how can we help?
• Posted: 2007-10-26 15:25:33 By dan r
• Dear Friends in the MD Community,
  
  I have spent the last several days in meetings at the American Academy of Optometry in Tampa, Florida. My main purpose in attending this event is to witness firsthand the educational opportunities the Academy offers to our optometrists, who are often on the front line of macular degeneration diagnosis and treatment.
  
  I have found the quality of the presentations high, the content informative and the doctors enthusiastic. I have seen men and women who are serious about their work and who are leaning more and more in the direction of low vision services for seniors like us.
  
  At the same time, I have witnessed frustration in many of them who worry that the profession is not moving fast enough in that direction. As our older population grows and the number of care providers dwindle, they fear that their ability to provide sufficient care will soon begin to be overburdened by the sheer number of people who will need it. A low vision rehabilitation delivery system is in place (see http://www.mdsupport.org/lvrehab.html ), but it can work only if enough care providers are in place to steer it.
  
  Unless a cure for MD is found in the next few years, the demand for treatment will grow tremendously, and the burden on society will become even greater. The annual economic impact of eye care in the US is estimated at 51 billion dollars, not counting the cost of refraction correction. According to James M. Tielsch, PhD (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), as life expectancy increases, the prevalence of diabetes and eye problems grows, as the availability of treatments outpace primary prevention and (hopefully) as the health care system improves to become available to more people, we can expect the demand for services to flood the system by 2015.
  
  What can we do about it? First, we can slow the onslaught by practicing good prevention measures. It may be too late for us who are already in the system, but we can certainly help spread the word to others who need to understand the risks of poor diet, smoking, insufficient exercise and eye protection. We must do this not just for their sake, but for our own sake, by keeping our quality of care from diminishing as more and more people begin to crowd into the waiting rooms.
  
  Another thing we can do is to encourage our doctors to stress the importance of low vision evaluation and rehabilitation. The easiest way to do that is to print out and give to your caregiver/s the information about the low vision rehab delivery model from:
  
  http://www.mdsupport.org/deliverymodel/description.html
  
  This is important information for both professionals and patients, as we work in partnership toward maintaining an effective continuum of care during the coming years.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Dan Roberts, Director
  Macular Degeneration Support
  web: http://www.mdsupport.org
  email: director@mdsupport.org