Welcome to our Online Patient Center!
Here you can get information about what to expect during your visit with one of our optometrists.
We want your visit to be as stress-free as possible. Our staff will do everything they can to make sure your experience is pleasant and convenient. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
What to Expect
When you visit our office, you will be warmly welcomed and we can answer any questions you may have about completing the paperwork so that Central Ohio Vision and Eyecare may see you. Our team will work together to evaluate your eyes and provide relevant eyecare treatment information, review your vision benefits and payment options, fit you for glasses or contact lenses, and focus on exceeding all of your expectations. If at any time you have questions about the process or your specific health information, please ask.
Check In
When you visit our office, you will be warmly welcomed by our wonderful staff at the front desk. They will request your photo ID and insurance cards (yes, medical & vision if you have it!) and scan them into your profile. We do this to make sure every record we have is up-to-date and accurate. At this point, we will hand you some paperwork – it’s on a laminated sheet so you can fill it out and we can just scan it in – no paper wasted! We will go over what the paperwork means, but here’s a quick run-down.
- HIPAA & our financial policies – there’s a signature on both sides verifying that you understand how we use HIPAA in this office, and how we bill your insurance and collect payments.
- Consent for testing – this covers what testing we’re going to do! Our standard of care includes retinal photographs and visual field screenings. The visual field screening will help us more thoroughly test your side vision to help screen for things like glaucoma or even brain tumors. The retinal photographs will allow us to more accurately document the health of the inside of your eyes (a picture is worth a thousand words!).
Pre-Testing
At this point, one of our wonderful technicians will be going over your information with our team and preparing to take you back for your exam. There will be some machines and some beeps but no puff-test, promise! Once you’re all done with pre-testing the optometric technician will take you back to your room to get comfortable and go over the reason for your visit. After some chatting, the doctor will be briefed on what is going on with your eyes and what the plan is today. You will read some letters on the chart to test how well your eyes are seeing right now – guesses are ok! The doctor will then test how well your eyes work together and measure your eyes for changes and potentially a new glasses prescription. This is the one or two test, or a refraction – no wrong answers!
The Exam
After the refraction is done, the doctor will examine the health of the front of your eyes. He will check for dryness, infections, scratches and any other ocular diseases that can make you uncomfortable or lead to loss of vision. You’ll get some yellow drops on your eyes so we can screen you for glaucoma – like I said, no puffs! After that it’s time to dilate. It’s important to dilate because it gives the doctor the best views of the inside of your eyes to make sure everything is healthy. Afterwards you will be a little light sensitive, but we have really stylish post-dilation sunglasses you can wear out!
Final Stretch
You can expect to get two things on the day of your exam. First, you’ll have a complete assessment of the health of your eyes and second, you may have a new prescription! Our Doctor will tell one of our opticians what changed and what his recommendations are and the opticians will help explain everything that you are able to do with your new RX. Finally, if you wear contacts you might have some new lenses in your eyes. We will likely schedule a follow up to see how the vision and comfort are after about a week of using the lenses. A lot of people are surprised that they don’t need to buy contacts the day of their exam – we want to make sure you love them before you purchase them!
One of our amazing optometric technicians will come looking for you and take you back to your exam room. You’ll be fully dilated by this time – blurry up close, fine far away but sensitive to bright lights. The doctor will do a final run through of your ocular health and go over anything and everything with you – if you have any questions this is a good place to interject them if they haven’t been covered already! We get a lot of people who wonder if they are candidates for laser eye surgery, how their cataracts are doing, et cetera. Dr. Karres or Dr. Keller will go over all of that with you and we have some wonderful surgeons in the area he refers those procedures to.
Check Out
That’s it! An hour later, your exam is all over. If there are any follow ups or evaluations to do down the road we will get those scheduled at check out. This is where our team will go over how your insurance works if applicable, and walk you through what the charges are and make sure you get itemized copies of your receipts plus your prescription.
This should hit all the high points of what to expect when coming in to get your eyes checked at Central Ohio Vision & Eyecare. This is just a general, run-of-the-mill eye exam – we get a lot of exceptions and strange stuff that keeps our days really interesting. Like it says on our front page – “In everything we do, we make it our mission to provide our friends, neighbors and the surrounding community with exceptional eyecare and optometric expertise in a setting that is friendly, welcoming and efficient.” Come see us – you’ll see better!