EyeOn Patients - Illinois College of Optometry

A Message
from the President
“Mom, the trees have leaves on them!” How many times have you heard a grateful
mother tell this story about her child who just received new glasses for the first
time, and noticed the visual details not previously seen with the child’s uncorrected
myopia?
Or, how about the working adult whose vision kept fluctuating…only to
discover during his eye examination that he had previously undiagnosed diabetes?
What about the new teenage contact lens wearer who develops a much better
self image and social confidence with her new vision correction?
How many times have you solved a 40-year-old patient’s near vision difficulties
with the prescription of reading glasses, or progressive addition lenses?
Improving patients’ lives by diagnosing and treating their eye and vision
disorders is what optometrists do better than anyone. ICO graduates have had the
best opportunity in the country to be exposed to a great variety of eye and vision
disorders as they trained at the Illinois Eye Institute. In conjunction with a very
robust external site rotation program at ICO, no other optometry program offers
such comprehensive patient care learning experiences.
In the process of that learning experience, our optometry students work oneon-one
with faculty mentors to provide care for the 75,000 patient visits at the
Illinois Eye Institute each year. IEI is a community resource to the South Side of
Chicago. We are the largest provider of eye and vision care at a single location in
the state of Illinois. Fifty percent of our patients are eligible for care through the
Illinois Department of Public Assistance (IDPA). Ten percent of our patients do
not have any means to pay for their needed care, but IEI provides the same
outstanding level of care to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.
This issue features the many and diverse programs at the Illinois Eye Institute.
If you get nostalgic as you read, please send us your memories. They can be
emailed to Carmen Marti at cmarti@gte.net, or mailed to her at 1706 W. Ohio
St., Chicago, IL 60622.
Thank you,
Arol Augsburger, OD
Spring 2005 / ICO Matters 4