Have you ever wanted to give a scholarship to a vision therapy patient who had a genuine financial hardship but didn't know how to do it? There are just a lot of questions when reducing fees for a patient.
Can you reduce your fees? Will an insurance company see this as payment discrimination?
Does the patient have a real need? Can I ask for information about their personal income?
How do you determine which patients would qualify? What if they have poor attendance or participation, can I revoke the scholarship?
How do you give scholarships without it breaking the bank and affecting your ability to provide therapy to other patients?
I want to let you know about an exciting partnership with the non-profit I'm a part of called the Foundation for Vision Therapy Awareness. This non-profit was started almost 10 years ago by patients of mine who saw the amazing benefits of vision therapy and wanted to get the word out. They also saw the need to raise funds for patients who could not afford vision therapy.
If you've been a part of any non-profit, you learn very quickly that it is difficult to raise money. This is particularly true when we tried raising money for vision therapy. Generally, giving organizations prefer it when their donation is able to benefits many different people. With vision therapy, often thousands of dollars are needed for one person.
What I did find is that this non-profit provided a great way for me to offer scholarships to my patients. It provided an easy way for me to track what donations I was giving. The donation came through a 501c3 nonprofit which alleviated any concerns with price discimination. I also didn't have to decide who was entitled to a scholarship and who wasn't. If patients had poor attendance or participation in therapy, then it was the nonprofit who revoked the scholarship, not me.
We want to provide you with the same benefit. We've been trialing this program with several providers around the United States and it has worked really well. If you are interested in this program that allows you to give scholarships to your patients, we ask that you sign up here:
We are still trying to gauge interest and determine if our small non profit can handle the volume of people that would be interested. Signing up for this program, helps to make that determination. Once you sign up you can send your patients to: https://www.fvtaware.org/scholarship-application where they can apply for a scholarship. There's also a link on our homepage.
To be clear, we do not have funds to provide vision therapy scholarships to the masses. But, what we can do is to be a resource to allow you to provide scholarships to your patients. If you decide to fund a scholarship for one of your patients, then we let them know it was given through your generosity. If you decide you cannot afford or based on the information we gather that you choose not to give, then we let the patient know that as a non-profit, we do not have the funds available to provide a scholarship.
If you'd like to learn more about this program, we've set up a provider website that provides more information
Password: providerFVTA
We do ask that you consider a donation to our non-profit. Not only do we help provide scholarships, but the money will go toward our efforts to get the word out about vision therapy and the battle to get better insurance coverage. Learn more at www.fvtaware.org.