1. Is this vision therapy covered by the provincial health care plan, or my health care plan?
Our assessment and any recommended therapies are not covered by the provincial health plan at this time. Some extended health care plans (BlueCross, Great West Life etc.) may cover a portion of therapeutic glasses if you have not already used those funds with your primary care optometrist. Still other group plans have some coverage for this type of therapy. To determine if your plan allows for any coverage, please contact your plan administrator or the insurer. Some common terms our services include under extended care plans are vision training, neurovisual postural training, neuro-optometry, behavioural optometry, and your insurer should be able to determine if any of these categories are available to you.
2. I need this but I don’t have health care plan beyond the provincial plan. Is there anything Vision Sense Optometry can do to help me?
Vision Sense Optometry is committed to helping rehabilitate the visual systems of those who need us, and we understand that for many of our patients, their visual processing dysfunctions have resulted in an inability to work, or their processing difficulties are not covered by their existing health plans.
We offer a number of payment options including monthly billing of vision therapy (billed at the start of each month, typically for 4 sessions per month), lump sum prepayments of packages of sessions (a minimum of 10 sessions and a progress evaluation) and we have partnered with iFinance Medicard to provide financing options to our patients who qualify. In this way, larger therapeutic recommendations like Sensory Integration or therapeutic glasses can be paid in monthly installments. Our team would be happy to discuss this further by phone at 902-454-1520.
3. I’m having trouble reading. It’s hard to focus on the words long enough to get anything from the text. Can you help? Is there any hope? It wasn’t always like this.
A number of factors can result in changes to the visual processing system- injury, illness, age, and medications are just a few. If you are experiencing changes to your visual abilities that are not directly related to your eye health, as determined by your primary care optometrist or ophthalmologist, we may be able to help. During the assessment, our doctors will determine how well your visual system is functioning, including eye teaming and tracking, which is a more comprehensive analysis of visual processing than was conducted during your primary eye care exam. This can often detect visual processing dysfunctions that cause blurred or double vision, difficulty focusing, difficulty comprehending what is read, eye fatigue and more. We would be happy to discuss booking an assessment for you with one of our doctors.
4. My eye doctor says my child has a lazy eye. Can vision therapy fix this?
Vision therapy is a non-surgical treatment approach that can treat not only amblyopia (lazy eye), but also strabismus (crossed eyes), as well as reading difficulties associated with how a child’s eyes track, team, and work together. Vision therapy occurs through the principle of neuroplasticity, meaning that visual processing in the brain can continually be reprogrammed and retrained throughout one’s entire life! The therapy program is highly customized for each individual child’s unique vision. Therapy sessions are one-on-one and include fun exercises and activities to engage and improve the visual system.