Abstract
Diabetic retinopathy is a serious complication of diabetes and can lead to severe vision loss and blindness. Dilated eye exams can lead to early detection, treatment and preventing any further progression of eye disease. Eye exams should be conducted at diagnosis and depending on the findings, frequency of screening is determined. Diabetic retinopathy can often be silent until severe vision consequences arise, hence the recommendation for yearly exams. Unfortunately, this area of diabetes screening is often neglected. Patients often have no symptoms, which can lead to a drop in compliance rates. This scholarly project will explore compliance rates after providing education, encouragement, and support related to compliance with these exams. Interventions will be implementing that include teaching, written handouts, and pre-set appointments. Barriers for non-compliance were evaluated. Compliance rates were measured by looking at baseline physician eye exam completion rates and compared after education and pre-set appointment making were implemented. The physician rates of eye exams did improve by 8% after implementation, however, total clinic rates of dilated diabetic eye exams did decline slightly.