The cost of a visit to the eye doctor can be a real concern, not to mention the cost of quality made eyewear or the most advanced contact lenses. We understand! Fortunately, in most cases, insurance may help lower these annual expenses.

Basically, there are two types of coverage: medical insurance and vision benefits.

A vision plan is not really insurance, as it simply provides a one-time discount (usually every 1 to 2 years) for reduced costs for glasses or contact lens exams and does not include any treatment or discussion of medical conditions/concerns. Unfortunately, almost all vision plans have not increased their reimbursements in literally decades. Like many eye doctors, we simply can’t continue to provide our high level of care and are being forced to accept less of these plans.

While we share in your frustration, the great majority of our patients are still being seen in our office by submitting their visit to their medical insurance plans using medical complaints (no matter how trivial you may think it is), even if there are multiple complaints per year. These complaints can be such things as headaches, seeing floaters, ocular itching, dry eye, the need to monitor “freckles” in the eye, ocular injuries, monitoring for glaucoma, early cataracts, macular degeneration, or even simply having systemic diseases such as diabetes (these patients need more thorough retinal examinations) or hypertension.

If you need glasses or contacts we have the ability to file for your out-of-network benefits for you so that you may be directly reimbursed for your out-of-pocket expenses. In fact, since we have started doing this we have had several patients shop around only to return commenting that our prices were less than elsewhwere, even with using their vision insurance.

Finally, having insurance at the time of service does not guarantee payment, so we always recommend you check with your carrier prior to your visit and obtain any necessary referrals.