Supporting members offering telehealth services
We believe tele-optometry is a key element in ensuring our community can access time-critical and urgent eye care during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We believe that, given a Medicare rebate is not currently available, it is appropriate to charge a reasonable private fee for this service.
Telehealth tools*
There are a number of tools available that can assist with delivering telehealth consultations. These include online and ‘print at home’ eye charts to perform remote visual acuity assessments. Careful instruction needs to be given to ensure these are appropriately used by patients to support meaningful and accurate assessments. A distance and near logMAR chart are now available for members to download here, and a free online eye chart is available at www.wolfchart.org.
An online (and printable) Amsler Grid for your patients is available here.
Melbourne Rapid Fields (MRF) provides a tool for undertaking rapid and accurate threshold testing of visual field for patients with eye and neurological conditions, (in either a telehealth context or face-to-face). For details of how the tool works, please see https://visiondata.net.au. Optometry Australia is pleased to have negotiated a 25% discount for the next 12 months for members wishing to use the MRF online visual field tool (simply contact the vendor and supply them with your name and member number)
*Please note Optometry Australia has no financial interest in any of the listed tools and is not endorsing or being paid to promote these products. These tools are being listed here purely as information to assist members provide telehealth and remote services.
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