Dr. Brian Meyer has a passion to save vision.  He has accepted multiple grants to help preserve sight.  At Marimn Health, he was awarded funds to pursue diabetic retinopathy and continous glucose monitors.  It's amazing to think about how much we spend on healthcare once a patient is sick, but neglect to spend money when a patient is early in the disease process.  For instance, we spend thousands of dollars for ocular injections when a patient has advanced diabetic retinopathy (a lot of times patients get injections every 6-8 week), but will not pay for a continuous glucose monitor unless a patient is on insulin.  After the program started at Marimn Health, our primary care providers found that a continous glucose monitor benefited patients a lot of the times more than even switching medications, so the leadership team provided cgm's for patients even when medical insurance wouldn't pay for them.  

At Marias Health in Shelby, our younger patients were not getting screened for amblyopia at well child checks.  It's devastating to have a patient older than 7 come in with reduced vision in one eye that will never get that back the rest of their life.  He was able to get a community grant from BCBS MT to help purchase the equipment.

He also received a grant from the State of Montana for diabetic eye care.  Working with Montana Department of Health and Human Services,  he found Montana to fall well short of standard of care.  Montana currently has a program that provides telemedicine retinal images in primary care offices, but even with the cameras being in offices we are failing our patients.  See the statistics from dphhs.  Over a 4 year period, only 231 exams were done from 7 clinics. https://dphhs.mt.gov/assets/publichealth/Diabetes/Infographics/MTDMRetinopathyTelehealth.pdf