A new Fort Worth clinic hopes to stop vision loss caused by a common chronic disease
Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in Tarrant County. Untreated, it can cause kidney failure and can contribute to heart disease and stroke.
But diabetes also affects people’s eyes, and can lead to vision loss and blindness.
A new eye clinic in Tarrant County hopes to stem the tide of diabetes-related vision loss, particularly among county residents who don’t have health or vision insurance to pay for the essential care.
The clinic, part of the North Texas Area Community Health Centers, will primarily serve patients with eye damage and vision loss that stems from diabetes and hypertension. For years, patients at the health center have gone without eye care because they couldn’t afford to go to an eye doctor or else couldn’t get transportation to the low-cost eye clinics located elsewhere in the city.
“A lot of these patients go without ever seeing an eye doctor because they can’t access that care,” said Dr. Patricia Rodriguez, the chief medical officer at the health center.
The eye clinic is located on the second floor of the health center’s flagship northside location at 2332 Beverly Hills Drive. The clinic began seeing patients in August and opened fully to the public in November.
Jesús Solis began coming to the northside clinic about eight years ago to get medical care for diabetes and high blood pressure. Solis, a 64-year-old Fort Worth resident, does not have health insurance. Through the care Solis has received at the clinic, he has managed to lower his blood sugar significantly, he said in Spanish, and control both his diabetes and his blood pressure. But before Solis began getting treatment, his diabetes damaged the tiny blood vessels behind his left eye, he said. He will need eye surgery to repair the damage to his eye, but can’t currently afford the care, he said.
Carmen Lavarreda, a community health educator at the clinic, said she sees patients like Solis - who have lost vision because of their diabetes - every day. Lavarreda said some patients who have had unmanaged diabetes don’t know the disease can cause lasting damage to their eyes.
“I often have patients who have been diagnosed with diabetes for years,” Lavarreda said. “When we sit down and educate ... they actually don’t know what their A1C is, or what their diabetes really is.”
Rodriguez said the clinic will offer kids and adults standard vision care, but that she expects the majority of patients to need treatment for diabetes or hypertension related vision loss based on current patients’ needs. Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in adults aged 18 to 64, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fort Worth optometrists with Community Eye Clinic first began noticing the need for another eye clinic years ago, when they realized that hundreds of patients being referred to them from the northside health center simply weren’t showing up for their appointments.
“The patients from Northside just weren’t coming, and we had a waiting list 800 or so deep,” said Dr. Jennifer Deakins, the clinical director of the downtown clinic, which offers low cost vision care to people without insurance.
Deakins said patients lacked transportation or else simply weren’t comfortable going someplace new for their medical care, so they went without.
Now, those patients won’t have to make a trip across town. Instead, they can take walk upstairs to the second floor of the health center.
In addition to treatment for diabetic and hypertension-related eye conditions, the clinic will also offer other primary needs like glasses and routine exams, said clinic director Dr. Mary Kate Sain. And, through a partnership with the University of Houston College of Optometry, fourth year students from the college will rotate through the clinic where they will do hands-on training under Sain’s supervision.
“We’ll serve as a teaching institution,” said Sain, who is also a professor of practice at the college. “So we’ll be able to provide the most exceptional patient care but also help (new doctors) learn and train.”
The eye clinic is the first of several additions the health center hopes to offer to create a medical home for some of Tarrant County’s most vulnerable residents, Rodriguez said. Eventually, the center hopes to be able to offer dental care as well as additional behavioral and mental health services.
The northside clinic is the flagship location of the North Texas Area Community Health Centers, the only health center in the county designated as a Federal Qualified Health Center. Such centers received federal funding to provide medical care in areas considered medically underserved. In Tarrant County, the center treats thousands of people who don’t have health insurance and who have very low or no income. In Tarrant County, about 17% of adults between the ages of 18 and 65 do not have health insurance, according to census data.
Texas has more residents without health insurance than any other state in the U.S.
The health center is open to anyone seeking medical care. Last year, the clinic treated more than 11,000 patients, with almost all of those patients earning less than 200% of the federal poverty guidelines, or about $13,000 annually for an individual, according to federal data. The majority of patients at the health center don’t have any type of health insurance, according to the data.
The eye clinic was funded through support from the Alcon Foundation, Lighthouse for the Blind of Fort Worth, the Amon G. Carter Foundation, and the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved.
How to get eye care if you don’t have health or vision insurance or are underinsured: To visit the eye clinic at the Northside Community Health Center, you must be a current patient of the center. To become a patient and request an appointment, call 817-625-4254 or go online to ntachc.org.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 1:46 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated Dr. Sain’s name. Dr. Mary Kate Sain is the clinic director.
