Choosing a Practice
Selecting a practice and a vision therapy specialist for you and your family is a personal and important decision. Not all optometrists provide in-depth testing for developmental and functional vision system deficiencies and conduct relevant treatment, including vision therapy. Vision therapy optometrists who provide vision therapy services also have varying credentials and competencies.
What is a Vision Therapist?
A vision therapist is a professional who works alongside a developmental optometrist in vision therapy treatment to help with eye conditions. Vision therapists use individualized programs to redevelop, train, and strengthen neural connections and eye muscles. They also use specialized instruments and computers to help their patients with their visual skills.
Find Vision Therapy
A vision therapy center’s treatment program is not always covered by medical insurance plans. If vision therapy is covered, it may be only a partial reimbursement and could result in major out-of-pocket expenses for your family. This makes it critical that you conduct objective research and comparisons of doctors and practices in the selection of your preferred practice.
“To assist you in selecting the vision therapy center that best meets your unique and specific requirements, we recommend using a decision model. A decision model will help and provide you an objective process in your practice selection.”
Decision Model Guidelines:
- Start with a goal statement, e.g., “I want my amblyopia to be better within six months,” The more specific the statement, the better.
- Identify the factors that have the most effect on the attainment of the goal and the elements that have the most relevance to you or your child. We recommend five to six factors only. Several elements can be grouped within a factor to minimize the complexity of your model.
- Key Step: assign the weighting to each factor based on importance to you and its impact on the attainment of the goal. The total points of the weightings assigned to the different factors should equal 100.
- Multiply the weighting percentage of each factor by the score that you assigned; based on your research, experience, and relevance to you. (The sample reflects a “perfect practice” thus the scores are 100 for every factor)
- Add the total points of the different practices that you are selecting from. You can have as many practices in your model as you prefer. We recommend no more than three.
- The Practice that has the highest total points will be your “Preferred Practice”.
“Visiting a practice and meeting a vision therapist doctor in person will make your decision model scoring more effective and objective.”
Find a Developmental Optometrist
The following steps will help:
