Specifications

73 III For Providers
The EyePACS Handbook: Tools for Program Success
Patient Spotlights
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that this program really is about avoiding preventable
blindness and changing people’s lives. There are countless stories of patients whose
eyesight was saved because they were given a routine retinopathy screening through
the EyePACS program. Here are some of those stories.
• A woman came in for a regular appointment. She had relatively low blood sugar
levels and was not experiencing any vision problems. When her retina was
scanned, though, she had very significant hemorrhagic occlusions - in the
doctor's words, she could literally have gone blind within a week. The
photographer noted the abnormality, called EyePACS to expedite the reading,
and referred her to an ophthalmic surgeon to schedule immediate intervention.
An insistence on routine scanning for asymptomatic patients, the availability of
an on-site camera, and rapid turnaround for readings literally saved this
woman's sight.
• A patient came in for the screening as a walk-in complaining about some loss of
vision in one eye. When the photographer looked at his eye he could see serious
hemorrhaging. The images were sent to EyePACS and the patient was
immediately referred out to an ophthalmologist. Despite the bleeding, the
doctors caught it in time and the doctor was able to treat him.
• A non-diabetic patient complained of vision problems, so his clinic made a
referral appointment for him to see an eye doctor whose earliest availability was
in four months. On a hunch, the photographer suggested that they go ahead
and image his eye. They uploaded the images to EyePACS, and the reader
called while the patient was still in the clinic to say that he needed a specialist
immediately. The specialist confirmed that he had an aggressive brain tumor.
• One physician was skeptical about the program because he didn’t want to
burden his medical assistant with more responsibilities. We performed a
screening on one of his patients who had never had an eye exam before, and
uncovered severe retinopathy that the provider would never have caught
without this technology. The patient received an immediate referral, and this
provider is now a strong advocate for routine DRS.
• One clinic’s first patient was a 14 year old diabetic boy who refused to watch his
blood sugar. His screening revealed a hemorrhage in his eye. His mother was
very upset and the boy was very surprised. It’s likely that the realization had an
effect on his willingness to try to manage his blood sugar better. The prospect of
diabetes affecting something so real – your eyesight – can really motivate
people to take better care of themselves.