We do not manage payments through our office however, we have partnered with Care Credit Healthcare Financing to provide you with an excellent financing option. Information can be obtained at their website: www.carecredit.com and we are happy to assist you in this process. Please ask one of us for information on this option. If you are unable to pay for the services we recommend, please call and ask us about some of the wonderful service organizations that we accept referrals from.

Currently we do not. However, we have a very comfortable office with books and coloring activities for children. We also have a changing table in our restroom and a safe environment that is toddler friendly. Although we are such a fun office, we do recommend that if you wish to bring additional children with you to your child's examination, you may not be able to watch the examination as our exam rooms are very small. Bringing additional children to visits like therapy or progress evaluations is fine, as you will be able to stay with them in the waiting area.

We do not test for dyslexia because it is a language processing disorder and we refer to speech language specialists for the testing. Also, components of dyslexia testing are visual and if your child has an underlying visual efficiency or processing issue, we do not know for sure what is causing the concerns. We recommend that a child complete therapy first and if there are still some issues, we can refer for dyslexia testing.

There are lots of places to purchase eye glasses these days. You can even buy them on the internet. Lenses change the way we view the world. Have you ever looked through a warped lens or an old window pane that has sagged? It changes the way things look. Improperly fit or poor quality eye glasses can cause the same effect, sometimes so slightly that you can't perceive a difference. Your vision may look better with the glasses just because things are clearer, but they may not be accurate. This may not be a problem for some adults, but in a young child, who has a visual system that is still developing, it can cause havoc. The only way you know is to find an office or optical that you trust and has a good reputation for good quality and accuracy. You also can have your glasses double checked by the doctor that prescribed them for you.

Safety is also an important issue with children's glasses. The lens material that has been used for ages is polycarbonate. It is the "safety lens". Although poly is safe, it has inferior optics. There is a newer material that is usually just as safe as polycarbonate and offers much better optics. This material is called Trivex. We recommend this material whenever possible for children. Be sure to ask your optician to specify the type of "safety lens" as lots of places default to polycarbonate. You will want to make sure it is a good quality polycarbonate or ask for Trivex.

Vision therapy is designed specifically to treat the patient's needs. Most treatment plans consist of 1 hour weekly sessions in the office directly with our vision therapist. In addition to this, we prescribe home therapy activities that vary with the child's abilities and amount of time parents have to spend. Some children need or want to do more and some need to do less. Every 8 weeks, the doctor will perform a progress report to assess how things are going. At this visit, all of the child's skills will be assessed and any changes needed in the treatment plan will be made. Most treatment plans take 5 to 8 months.

The type of vision therapy that we do retrains the brain. It involves integrating all of the senses to strengthen the visual processing. This can take a long time with some children. We do this by using activities that challenge current concepts and imbed the 25 vital skills that are necessary for efficient visual function. Over 90% of the brain is used in vision. During our therapy, we stimulate all the different areas that are necessary for development with the long term goal of perfect visual function that will last a lifetime.

There are many resources available on the internet that teach about vision therapy. Please visit our Links listing to visit these websites.

Every year after age 3 if all is normal. There are some instances where we may want to see your child more frequently and this will be discussed at your visit. A child's visual system changes rapidly as they grow and you may even want to bring them in more frequently if they are complaining or you notice something. 

The American Optometric Association recommends all children be examined at 6-9 months of age. It is also recommended sooner if there are signs of eye problems like an eye turning in, unequal red reflexes in photos, drooping eye lids, excessive redness or any other concerns. We love to examine babies and encourage it.
 

Contact lenses can be fit on children as young as 6 months of age. This is very rare but is sometimes necessary for good binocular development. In cases where the child is unable to insert and remove the lenses, a parent is taught these skills. As soon as a child is ready emotionally and is motivated to be responsible enough to wear contacts, we can fit them. We always perform a free in-office-test-drive with contacts to make sure it is something they wish to do. Most children are ready around age 10, but some wish to wait and others are ready earlier. Contact lens fitting needs to be something that the child, the parents, and the doctor are all ready to do.

In addition to checking for good eye health and for glasses and contacts, we also perform a function vision evaluation. Included in a comprehensive examination is a check for binocularity (using the eyes together and having the brain process the images with the correct area), eye tracking/teaming, focusing and appropriate eye posturing. If there are concerns in these areas or if additional testing is appropriate, we also test for visual processing, laterality, motor skills, auditory skills, spatial awareness and memory in our developmental work up. This work up also includes a computerized eye tracking evaluation. Seeing 20/20 is sometimes not enough and we go beyond that.

No. While school screenings check for vision issues, they do not evaluated your child's eye health, binocularity and perception. It is very important to have a comprehensive evaluation done by a doctor and more specifically a doctor that specializes in children.

Vision therapy is available to anyone who suffers from eye fatigue or pain, headaches, vision related learning disabilities, poor eye-hand coordination, double vision, blurry vision not corrected with glasses, computer vision syndrome, or anyone who just wants to improve their overall visual efficiency. Children who have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD or dyslexia, labeled as slow learners, lazy or who just aren't performing up to their potential will often benefit from VT. Vision therapy is also very effective for children who have a strabismus (eye turn) or amblyopia (lazy eye).

We have chosen to focus most of our time on patient care and education. The insurance business has gotten very complicated and in order to be useful to you we would have to take time and resources away from the quality services we provide to learn about your plan and communicate with your insurance company. However, we are very motivated to do whatever we can to help you obtain maximum reimbursement from your insurance company. We do have a billing specialist that is available to research the best way to obtain out of network coverage and help you with the paperwork. We are happy to bill your insurance company on your behalf (which means we will send in the bill) and process the payment. We may ask that you pay for your visit up front even though we are billing for you. If we do collect and your insurance company still pays us, we will refund you promptly. Please check our services/professional fees page to see more information about which plans we do contract with. Please call us and ask about Network Waivers since we are a specialty office.