Valley Laser Eye Centre has become the sixth premium LASIK and cataract eye centre to offer the LipiView and LipiFlow systems for the diagnosis and treatment of evaporative dry eye disease by TearScience.
Whenever I see a patient who is a candidate for cataract surgery, I make a point of offering them the option of having the surgery in the public health care system or in the private health care system.
This week, when I presented these options to a patient who was interested in cataract surgery, she stopped me and said, "I thought you only did private care." I reassured her that for cataract surgery I provided both public and private surgery. (My refractive practice is exclusively private as government does not insure those services.)
This reminded me of how confusing it must be for patients. They are getting very mixed messages from health news sources, health care administrators, and health care providers.
For almost twenty years, I have provided private as well as public surgical eye care to my cataract patients. The original reasons are very much different from the current motivations for my continuing to provide these options to my patients.