Choosing Medicines For Our Patients

How do your Skyvision Centers doctors choose which medicine is right for you? If there are several options, or several versions of the same or a similar medicine, why do they choose one over the other? Dr. White, Dr. Schlegel, and Dr. Kaye have followed the same general guidelines for many, many years. We have recently switched one of our most common prescribing patterns (cataract surgery medicines) so this is a good time to let you know how and why we choose your prescriptions.

First off, there is no financial incentive for any of our doctors or our staff to prescribe any single medicine (this is also true of things like implant choices for cataract surgery). Doctors and their staff are NEVER paid for writing a particular prescription by anyone. There are no kickbacks here, and there never were and never will be!

Here are our guidelines, in order of importance:

1) A patient must need to be treated with a medicine. In other words, a Skyvision doctor must diagnose a problem and feel that medicine is necessary.

2) The medicine must have the best proven outcome. It must be the best treatment for the job.

3) It must be safe. Among all of the available choices it must have the fewest side effects or complications possible.

4) It must be easy to take. It must be easy for patients to understand. In general, the fewer times each day one needs to take a medicine, the better. The shorter the course of treatment can be, the better.

5) It should be cost effective if possible. We only look at cost if guidelines 1-4 have been met and if there are multiple options available.


There you have it. Look for future updates on our pre- and post- cataract medicine protocols.