Promoting Eye Care in the Workplace

New Vision Wellness Program from Prevent Blindness America offers employers chance to save sight for their employees

  As health insurance costs continue to rise, employers are looking at ways to cut costs without cutting quality or access to care for their employees.  Promoting eye health in particular, is crucial to ensuring that employers keep their health care costs down.  The more vision ailments that employees have, the more medical care they utilize, which generates increased health-related expenditures for the employer.     

Prevention is one of the best ways to keep healthcare expenses down.  Fortunately, half of all blindness is preventable through early detection and treatment by an eye care professional.  Prevent Blindness America, the nation’s oldest volunteer eye health and safety organization, has declared March as Workplace Vision Wellness Month in an effort to educate corporations and their employees on the importance of vision health, including warning signs of potential eye disease and safety tips on how to avoid vision-threatening eye accidents.  Prevent Blindness America has recently launched its Healthy Eyes Vision Wellness Program designed to help companies provide the tools employees need to protect their eye health.

With more than 100 organizations already participating, the program offers educational and promotional materials that help to deliver critical vision wellness information in the workplace.  The materials were developed by leading eye care professionals including ophthalmologists, optometrists and research professionals designed to encourage employees to make vision care a health priority and help to avoid needless pain and suffering from preventable eye diseases. 

“Healthy vision is something that is so vital to our quality of life, yet we tend to take it for granted that it will always be there for us,” said Hugh R. Parry, president and CEO of Prevent Blindness America. “This program will allow companies to provide useful and timely information about eye wellness and eye safety to their most important resource, their employ- ees.  And, one of the best parts about the Healthy Eyes Vision Wellness Program is it’s free to participate!”

Employers may benefit from the Healthy Eyes Vision Wellness Program by the potential for increases in worker productivity, the reduction of vision-related disability claims and health benefit costs and a reduction of absenteeism and sick leave due to vision-related illness or work related eye injuries.
,br>
Story posted: 3/10/2009

» News Archive
» Subscribe to The Gary Crusader