PORTLAND – School officials, eye care providers and civic groups have joined forces to make sure students in need get eyeglasses this year, but it’s unclear how a lack of state funding for MaineCare patients will be addressed in the future.
School officials have collected $11,500 in donations for a special fund that will be used to provide glasses for children whose families are covered by MaineCare or don’t have health insurance.
Casco Bay Eyecare, Eyes on Rosemont, Pearl Vision, the Lions Club and Kiwanis Club are helping in various ways to stretch the fund’s dollars as far as possible.
“But this fund and their help is a short-term solution,” said Amanda Rowe, head nurse in the Portland public schools. “We can’t raise money every year for kids who need glasses. It’s just not sustainable.”
The school district started the fund in September, after Casco Bay Eyecare, a local group of eye care clinics, stopped dispensing free glasses through MaineCare, the state’s health insurance program for low-income people.
The clinics were the last eye care providers in Portland to take action against the $8 fee that MaineCare paid them to dispense free glasses. School nurses refer as many as 500 students from low-income families in Portland for glasses each year.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services hadn’t increased the fee since the mid-1980s and it didn’t reflect the real cost of their services, providers said. Other states pay $30 to $40 to dispense glasses.
DHHS unexpectedly increased the dispensing fee to $14.40 on Sept. 1, but with a $23 million budget shortfall looming, another increase isn’t expected anytime soon, spokesman John Martins said.
Many eye doctors now provide only vision exams and medical treatments for MaineCare patients because, they said, the state’s fees for those services are more in line with actual costs. The free glasses are provided by an out-of-state manufacturer under contract with DHHS.
School nurses will screen Portland students for vision problems through December, Rowe said. Any students who may need glasses will be referred to area eye doctors for full exams.
For now, Rowe said, Casco Bay Eyecare, which has two clinics in Portland, has agreed to provide free eye exams to students who don’t have health insurance and low-cost glasses to students covered by MaineCare.
“This is a stop-gap measure so the district gets the biggest bang for the buck with its fund,” said Rebecca Darling, the group’s administrator. “We’ll re-evaluate the situation after December to see if we can sustain it.”
Eyes on Rosemont also has agreed to provide lower-cost services, Rowe said, and the Pearl Vision chain store near the Maine Mall in South Portland has agreed to provide five free pairs of glasses per month for Portland students through December.
In addition, local Lions Clubs have offered to help provide eyeglasses to students if the fund runs out of money, and local Kiwanis Clubs plan to raise money for the fund, Rowe said.
Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:
kbouchard@pressherald.com
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