LIONS Outback Vision (LOV) runs urban clinics at Bentley Health Service and Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service once a month, offering surgery, |injections and follow-up treatment to predominantly Aboriginal patients.
The 20m van was launched in March last year and travels the state to provide ophthalmological services normally available only in Perth or major regional centres. A new study compared the data of two outreach ophthalmology clinics in 2015 against two trips to Derby in 2016 and showed the bigger van’s increase in equipment resulted in more patients being seen.
In 2016, around 50 per cent of booked patients attended their surgery but that increased to 100 per cent this year, with the LOV team building relationships with patients prior to surgery, including home visits for pre-admission paperwork and transport arrangements.
Dr Angus Turner said LOV had worked hard to ensure attending hospital was a less intimidating experience.
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