Optometrist: A health care professional who is licensed to provide primary eye care services:

• to examine and diagnose eye diseases such as glaucoma, cataracts, and retinal diseases and, in certain states in the U.S., to treat them;
• to diagnose related systemic (bodywide) conditions such as hypertension and diabetes that may affect the eyes;
• to examine, diagnose and treat visual conditions such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and presbyopia; and
• to prescribe glasses, contact lenses, low vision rehabilitation and medications as well as perform minor surgical procedures such as the removal of foreign bodies.

An optometrist is a Doctor of Optometry, an O.D. (not to be confused with a Doctor of Medicine, an M.D.). To become an optometrist, one must complete pre-professional undergraduate college education followed by 4 years of professional education in a college of optometry. Some optometrists also do a residency.

Patient/clients may be confused with respect to the professional/medical status of an optometrist, but the practising optometrist himself shouldn't be. He is, in effect, trained to be a capable technician, not a medical practitioner who diagnoses ailments and takes steps to treat them, but someone trained to observe the human eye and determine whether there are treatable problems.

That done, the optometrist, through a series of mechanical tests, approaches a specific individual through a series of test formulated to correct the vision of each of the presenting clients' eyesight, matching need to formula. When additional problems present, he then either consults with someone higher on the professional care scale like an ophthalmologist, or a surgeon.

The optometrist whom I have been using appears to have found his own useful formula. Through which he has become adept at milking the province's generous and trusting health-care system. The Ontario Health Insurance Plan will pay for an annual total eye check-up for senior citizens, of whom I most certainly am one. They will also pay for succeeding, follow-up visits, if required.

This optometrist, to whom I was referred after having previously been serviced by another whom I took a personal aversion to, as humourless, distant, cold and unfeeling albeit technically proficient, presented as someone in whose expertise I could trust. Particularly when he speedily referred me to an opthalmologist after his initial examination of my eyesight, over a year ago.

A year on and more, post-surgery, with the surgical opthalmologist looking after my care and checking my progress on a regular basis, the optometrist took tests, prescribed a progressive lens for me, and arranged a follow-up visit after I procured my new eyeglasses. The follow-up had no discernible purpose I could identify other than to ensure the optometrist had a coterie of patients re-visiting.

Although he entirely missed an eye event that my ophthalmologist readily picked up latterly, he has informed me he has every intention of seeing me on a regular, bi-monthly schedule. Billing OHIP, in other words, for follow-up checks there is no rhyme nor reason to pursue.