Partnership provides free cataract surgery for uninsured

KATHLEEN MERRYMAN
THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: July 22, 2009 

Dr. Jerry Shields had been waiting 10 months to look deep into Paulina Molina’s eyes.
Shortly after 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, his patience paid off.

He inaugurated a partnership between public health agencies and Cascade Eye & Skin Centers, P.C., in Puyallup by removing the cataract that had impeded Molina’s sight.

“They make a little incision into the eye, go down, over and down,” said clinic administrator Wanda Davis. “When they are finished, the pressure of the eyeball closes, so there is no stitch.”

It’s like operating in an M&M, she said, with the lens as the chocolate filling.

“You go in there and break up the chocolate and remove the matter. You put a new lens in there, and it expands,” she said.

Shields did all that in under 10 minutes, after those 10 months of waiting for a patient.
Just before the Puyallup Fair last year, Shields and his colleagues at Cascade contacted United Way of Pierce County, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and Community Health Care. Would it be possible, they asked, to give free cataract removal surgeries to two needy people a month?

People in the agencies serving low-income people were elated.

“Once people come into Community Health Care, they have a medical home,” said Linda Cameron of United Way. “But one of the barriers is not having enough specialists. For a specialist to say, ‘I want to do this,’ is extraordinary.”

They spread the word.

And they waited.

A client at Project Homeless Connect seemed like a candidate, but got to only one appointment and did not, or could not, follow through.

The doctors saved the sight of several people referred through churches and Good Samaritan Hospital, but that was outside of the new collaboration.

Over the months, Angel Ortiz Hernandez, managed care coordinator at Community Health Care, tracked seven or eight patients who needed cataract surgery, but had insurance to cover it.

Finally, Molina, an uninsured grandmother, told a clinician she wanted to be able to sew and do household chores again.

Hernandez referred her, and, on Tuesday, Cameron and Helen Myrick, also of United Way, welcomed her to the clinic.

Shields, Davis and administrative assistant AnnaMarie Miller, had lined up Rainier Anesthesia Associates, P.C., Abbot Medical Optics and Alcon Pharmaceuticals to provide anesthesia, drugs and the lens for the operation.

Clinic staff will care for Molina through her follow-up appointments.

Today, after her first follow-up, Molina, like all Cascade’s cataract patients, will take home a flowering kalanchoe. It’s a gift, said Miller, that “they can clearly see the day after surgery.”

None of these people asked for this story because they wanted personal publicity. Cascade docs have been doing mission work abroad and charity work at home for years with nary a peep of press. They enjoy it, believe they are blessed, and that’s enough.
They asked because they need help getting the word out to people who want to see clearly again.

Hernandez, Cameron and Myrick know there are people who need cataract surgery, but don’t ask about it because they don’t have insurance, or the $2,500 to $3,000 per eye to buy the procedure.

Hernandez guesses patients coming to Community Health Care clinics for, say, heart ailments, are not mentioning their poor vision. He suspects some clinicians have forgotten, or not heard, about the offer of free cataract surgery.

Last year, Hernandez managed 30,000 referrals for patients who needed a specialist’s care.

“When they are uninsured, it is a big dilemma, of course,” he said.

Given that, Cascade’s commitment to two free cataract surgeries a month for uninsured patients is a valuable asset, and Hernandez is eager to use it. He’s so eager, he’d like people who need the surgery to call him directly at 253-722-1541.

If you know someone who’s uninsured and can’t read this because of cataracts, call Hernandez. Make Shields, Davis, Miller and all their colleagues happy.

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