Research Article Diabetic Retinopathy Screening and Monitoring of Early Stage Disease in Australian General Practice: Tackling Preventable Blindness within a Chronic Care Model

Copyright © 2016 Lisa Crossland et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in Australia. Up to 50 % of people with proliferativeDRwhodonot receive timely treatmentwill become legally blindwithin five years. Innovative and accessible screening, involving a variety of primary care providers, will become increasingly important if patients with diabetes are to receive optimal eye care.Method. An open controlled trial design was used. Five intervention practices in urban, regional, and rural Australia partnered with ophthalmologists via telehealth undertook DR screening and monitoring of type 2 diabetes patients and were compared wit