Smart Vision Exam: An Act of Affordable Care

You use your sense of vision all the time but when was the last time you used your vision insurance? If you even have it.

Individuals and insurance companies alike tend not to see vision coverage as an essential healthcare cost. This leaves many people forgoing vision insurance, either to save money or because it was just not included in their healthcare plan.

The Statistics

This creates a gap in the amount of people who need vision care and those who actually receive it. In the United States, the number of Americans who need some kind of vision correction is 240 million. But each year, only 114 million eye exams are done.

Accessibility is a concern as well. If you live in a major city, you may not even realize this is a problem right here in America. Each eye doctor, on average, would have to provide care to five thousand people. That comes out to over 13 patients a day, every day, including weekends and holidays.

One of the healthcare-related problems the Affordable Care Act (ACA) seeks to reduce is the number of Americans who are underinsured. These are people who did not previously have insurance, either due to being unable to afford coverage or choosing not to have it. Not having insurance for either reason left those people vulnerable to high healthcare costs. However, the ACA does continue the trend of not considering vision care a health issue and does not require vision insurance or for companies to offer it.

The Service

This is where Smart Vision Labs comes in. They recognize the importance of vision care and seek to provide it in a way that is affordable and accessible to as many people as possible.

Using telemedicine, they are able to provide alternative health solutions in the area of vision care. Instead of waiting for an eye doctor, a 5-Minute Vision Exam allows a person (even without vision insurance) to take control of their eyes. You will still receive an accurate prescription for glasses or contacts but you also get the benefits of affordable care and convenient scheduling. Smart Vision Labs believes everyone should be receiving vision care, whether their insurance agrees or not.

And that’s really the entire purpose of this government mandate: to enable everyone, everywhere to have access to medical care. It’s a sense of empowering people to take control of their health. It’s a way to partner with people to create both the motivation and the means to enjoy a state of health.

The Solution

This is also accomplished through the 5-Minute Vision Exam. Patients will actually have “ownership” of the medical data that was collected and analyzed at the exam by accessing a password-protected portal. Any prescriptions will be easily accessible and kept in their account for future reference and for them to be able to chart any changes in their eye health.

While the focus of Smart Vision Labs is eye care and providing convenient and affordable ways to promote that, there is another ‘vision’ to consider. That’s the ‘vision’ of empowering people to have regular eye exams and to take an active part in their eye health. And they do that by giving people a way to act on affordable care.

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