Could Primary Care Physicians Screen Diabetic Retinopathy With Success?
iCareHealth2017-11-13T23:54:33+00:00Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a serious issue for diabetics. In fact, it’s the leading cause of blindness in American adults of working age. But there’s a real problem: early detection is crucial, yet the average wait time for a DR screening at an optometrist or ophthalmologist office has been around 8+ months. Even more troubling, not everyone needing a DR screening always gets a DR screening. So what if primary care physicians could be the solution to this eye issue? Researchers attempted to answer that very question by taking a teleretinal DR screening program to 5 safety net clinics in the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services network. Some of these clinic’s medical assistants and nurses were trained to use fundus photography. Those images were then sent to optometrists [...]