Blindness due to diabetes is a systems problem. Patients on optimal medical therapy (OMT) have one third as much blindness as those who receive usual care but very few Americans receive this treatment. Seven million Americans with diabetes don’t know they have it. They receive no treatment. One third of patient with diabetes have diabetic eye disease but only about half of all diabetics receive a diabetic eye exam annually. OMT early in diabetes is more effective in preventing blindness and they can’t get because they don’t know they have the problem. The eye exam is a great opportunity to help patients understand that diabetes is the most common cause of blindness in adults, but simple measures can dramatically reduce the risk. Optometrists and primary care chronic care condition teams should have a collaborative relationship. A non-physician on the team should make certain every patient has an eye exam. The optometrist should help the patient understand OMT can dramatically reduce the risk of increased eye damage. OMT is even more effective today. Blindness due to diabetes is far more common than it should be. Will we develop the systems to identify eye damage and treat it more effectively? We can do that now by developing teams focused on diabetes and related diseases and collaborating with optometrists.
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