Sight Sciences' fair access campaign aims for insured access to heat and expression therapy for meibomian gland dysfunction

Jim Sluck, VP of Marketing for Sight Sciences' TearCare, sat down with Optometry Times during the 2022 American Academy of Optometry meeting held in San Diego to share the impetus behind the company's fair access campaign.

Editor's note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi, my name is Jim Sluck, I'm Vice President of TearCare through Sight Sciences. I'm here to talk a little bit about our fair access campaign for insured access to heat and expression therapy.

The reality is there a lot of dry eye patients out there, and the vast majority have obstructive MGD [meibomian gland dysfunction]. We also know that only 5% of those patients are getting heat and expression therapy for this obstructive MGD.

The rationale for this low penetration of heat and expression utilization is that right now, this is a cash pay procedure. When if you think about care for dry eye--drugs, plugs, amniotic membranes--they're all covered by insurance in one shape, way or form. The fair access campaign is really driving for heat and expression, in this case through TearCare, to be an insured and reimbursed therapy that dry eye patients have access to.

We were telling this story to a number of ophthalmologists and optometrists across the country, and as we tell this story of access and fair reimbursement, they're so behind this that we couldn't tell the story one-on-one anymore, we had to start to campaign around it.

The first portion of the campaign that you'll see [is] our company folks talking to optometrists and ophthalmologists about why access is important.

The second portion will be peer-to-peer discussions with optometrists and ophthalmologists to their peer groups, talking about why access to care with a fair reimbursement is really important to overall patient care.

And lastly, it'll be patients talking to their payers about why their doctor should be able to use heat and expression to treat their dry eye, and why their doctors should be fairly reimbursed for that.

So that's the impetus behind the fair access campaign. Talk to us more about finding out more about the fair access campaign and TearCare at any point.