Comprehensive exams, contact lens fittings, children's vision and medical eye visits — matched to a practice taking new patients near you. Serving the Wasatch Front from Ogden down to Provo.
Vision usually changes slowly, and the stronger eye tends to carry the weaker one, so a change is more often measured at an exam than noticed at home.
Five kinds of visit, and one thing worth settling before any of them: whether this is going on your vision plan or your medical insurance.
Reading a chart is one small part of an exam. The rest is eye pressure, how the two eyes work together, and a look at the front and the back of the eye — including the optic nerve and the retina.
Learn more →Lenses sit on the eye rather than in front of it, so the fitting measures the eye's curvature and how the lens moves and settles. Practices differ a lot in which specialty lenses they fit — ask before you book.
Learn more →A screening is a quick pass or fail on distance acuity in a hallway. An exam covers near focusing, how the eyes work together, and the health of the eye itself.
Learn more →Dry eye is usually managed rather than solved in one visit, so the useful question is what the plan looks like after the first appointment — not just what to buy at the pharmacy.
Learn more →A medical eye visit is booked for a reason — a condition being monitored, a screening on a schedule, or a symptom. That reason is also what routes it to medical insurance rather than a vision plan.
Learn more →Three steps, and the first one is just saying what the visit is for.
Routine exam, contacts, a child's first exam, dry eyes, or a yearly exam your care team asked for. That is what decides which kind of practice you should be sitting in front of.
An optometrist or eye care practice taking new patients near you, for the kind of visit you described. We do not perform exams and we do not take your medical history to make the match.
Ask whether the exam includes dilation or retinal imaging and which one they are billing, whether the refraction is a separate charge, and whether the visit is being billed to your vision plan or your medical insurance.
Vision plans and medical insurance are not the same product and they do not cover the same visit. A vision plan is built around routine wellness eye care — the annual exam that ends in a glasses or contact lens prescription, plus some allowance toward the hardware. Medical insurance covers the eye the way it covers any other organ: when there is a symptom, a diagnosis or a condition being monitored, the visit is a medical visit and it goes through the medical side with your medical deductible and copay behind it.
What decides which one applies is the reason for the visit, not the office you chose or the doctor's title. Book a routine exam and mention on the way in that your eyes have been burning for a month, and the visit can turn medical while you are sitting in the chair. That is not a bait and switch — it is the billing rule working as designed — but it is a much better conversation to have at the front desk before the exam than at the counter afterward. Say out loud what the visit is for, ask which way it is being billed, and ask whether the refraction is charged separately, because on many plans it is.
We are a referral line. We take a call or a form, work out what kind of visit you are describing and roughly where along the Wasatch Front you want to be seen, and connect you with a practice that takes that kind of appointment. We do not run a clinic, we do not read your chart, and nothing on this site is a diagnosis or medical advice. Anything about your eyes specifically belongs to a licensed eye doctor looking at them in person.
That also sets the limit of what a referral is good for. A referral is a scheduling problem being solved. A sudden change in your vision is not a scheduling problem — sudden vision loss, new flashes or floaters, a curtain or shadow across part of your sight, or real eye pain needs to be seen the same day, by an eye clinic that can fit you in or by an emergency room. Do not wait on a form, ours or anyone else's.
Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties.
No. Vision 801 is a referral service that connects Utah patients with optometrists and eye care practices. We do not perform exams, we are not a medical practice, and nothing on this site is medical advice or a diagnosis. We match you to a practice and tell you what to ask when you get there; everything about your actual eyes belongs to the doctor examining them.
Because the reason for the visit decides the billing, not the office or the doctor's title. A vision plan covers routine wellness eye care that ends in a glasses or contact lens prescription. A symptom, an injury, or a condition being monitored makes the visit a medical one and it runs through your medical deductible and copay. Say what the visit is for at the front desk and ask which way it is being billed before the exam, and ask whether the refraction is charged separately.
Both examine eyes. Optometrists handle routine exams, prescriptions and a great deal of medical eye care; ophthalmologists are medical doctors who also perform eye surgery. Which you need depends on the reason for the visit, so describe it when you call rather than guessing. One thing to be clear about: a routine exam is not an evaluation for surgical vision correction — that is a separate visit with a different scope, and our sister site Lasik 801 covers it.
A screening and an exam are different appointments. A screening is a quick pass-or-fail check of distance acuity from a chart; it is not designed to check near focusing, how the eyes work together, or the health of the eye. Children also rarely report blurry vision, because they have nothing to compare it to. Ask a practice what exam schedule they recommend for your child's age, and mention anything a teacher or pediatrician noticed when you book.
No. Sudden vision loss, new flashes or a sudden shower of floaters, a curtain or shadow across part of your sight, real eye pain, or an eye that was struck or splashed all need same-day care — an eye clinic that can fit you in, an urgent care, or an emergency room. A referral is a scheduling tool and scheduling is not what that situation needs. Go in today, and use us afterward for the routine care.
Tell us what the visit is for and we will match you with an eye care practice taking patients near you.
Get Matched With an Eye DoctorA sentence is plenty. If something changed suddenly, call an eye doctor today instead of filling this in.