Referral to Vision Rehabilitation Services for Uveitis Patients: Referral Criteria and Barriers

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Despite the benefits of vision rehabilitation services (VRS) for uveitis patients, limited literature has examined issues in VRS access within uveitis. We surveyed American Uveitis Society members regarding VRS referral practices, criteria, and barriers.

Methods

Survey responses were collected from November 2022 to January 2023. Analysis summarized responses and compared response patterns of frequently-referring and infrequently-referring providers through Fisher’s exact tests and logistic regression.

Results

Most of the 33 respondents completed 1 to 5 monthly referrals using criteria of visual acuity loss, visual field loss, and difficulty performing vision-related activities. Key referral barriers included cost of services and insufficient patient-provider communication regarding vision loss. The practice of speaking to patients about vision loss during clinic visits was correlated with higher VRS referral rates (P = 0.047).

Conclusions

Greater patient-provider communication about vision loss may represent an opportunity to increase access to VRS.

KEYWORDS:

• Barriers
• criteria
• low vision
• referral
• uveitis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Credit roles

Christina M. Ambrosino: Data collection, Data analysis, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing; Mona A. Kaleem: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – Review and editing; Meghan K. Berkenstock: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this paper.