Spanaway Vision Clinic

This is a response to a complaint from *** *** about delayed delivery of glasses. This patient is covered by Community Health Plan of Washington DSHS. Because of this we have to send his prescription to the state's Correctional Industries CI Optical lab at Airway Heights,
Washington. This lab does all the states glasses and we have been told that they get up to orders a day. When we fax an order to them we do not get a daily report on if the order was received or what stage of processing it is at like our usual lab does. We have been told by the lab not to call about any orders for at least four weeks because it takes that long before the order is processed. When we do call it usually goes to voice mail and takes a while before we get a response. When we find out that they do not have the order they can't tell us why, we have to refax the order and the same long process starts again. It's not that we won't take blame for incorrect information given to the lab, there is very little we can do to be proactive with this lab on if they received the order that was faxed other than to follow the procedures they have. We can't use another lab and we have no control on how and when they process orders. We did not refuse to assist *** to expedite the process. It's our policy not to give out the labs phone number to patients. The lab does not want us to have patients contacting them. We have a hard enough time getting in touch with them let alone they had patients calling them. We are looking into if would be better to scan and e-mail orders rather than fax. We regret that this process has taken so long but have little we can do other than have them expedite the order as fast as they can.
Sincerely,
Terry G***.O.D
Spanaway Vision Clinic

This is a response to a complaint from [redacted] about delayed delivery of glasses.  This patient is covered by Community Health Plan of Washington DSHS.  Because of this we have to send his prescription to the state's Correctional Industries CI Optical lab at Airway Heights,...

Washington.  This lab does all the states glasses and we have been told that they get up to 800 orders a day.  When we fax an order to them we do not get a daily report on if the order was received or what stage of processing it is at like our usual lab does.  We have been told by the lab not to call about any orders for at least four weeks because it takes that long before the order is processed.  When we do call it usually goes to voice mail and takes a while before we get a response.  When we find out that they do not have the order they can't tell us why, we have to refax the order and the same long process starts again.  It's not that we won't take blame for incorrect information given to the lab, there is very little we can do to be proactive with this lab on if they received the order that was faxed other than to follow the procedures they have.  We can't use another lab and we have no control on how and when they process orders.  We did not refuse to assist [redacted] to expedite the process.  It's our policy not to give out the labs phone number to patients.  The lab does not want us to have patients contacting them.  We have a hard enough time getting in touch with them let alone they had patients calling them.  We are looking into if would be better to scan and e-mail orders rather than fax.  We regret that this process has taken so long but have little we can do other than have them expedite the order as fast as they can. 
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Terry G[redacted].O.D.
Spanaway Vision Clinic