ATLANTA—Professional Eyecare Resource Co-Operative (PERC) and Infinity Vision Alliance (IVA) have entered into a partnership with illuma Care Connections, a care coordination company offering services to payers and ECPs, that is designed to help solve the care gap experienced by many diabetic patients, the companies announced Tuesday.

The goal of the new partnership is to engage identified diabetic patients and schedule appointments with PERC and IVA providers, according to the companies’ announcement. The program also enables diabetic patients to receive necessary dilated eye exams, brings independent ECPs into the mainstream health care marketplace and improves quality scores for health plans, according to the joint announcement.

“We seek partnerships with organizations such as illuma that are solving a real problem in health care,” PERC president Dr. David Golden said in the announcement. “[The] illuma model will expand the role of doctors of optometry in the medical-centric health care delivery system. It also will ensure patients are getting the care they need while increasing the patient volume in PERC and IVA practices. It’s a true win-win.”

Stephen Kendig, chief executive of illuma, noted that diabetes is the leading cause of blindness among adults in the U.S., and that regularly scheduled dilated eye exams are an important piece of preventative care and chronic condition management. “Compliance with these exams is a key metric health plans use to measure quality and develop quality improvement programs,” Kendig said in the announcement. “By partnering with PERC and IVA, we can help more diabetic patients get their necessary eye exams to ensure an even higher rate of compliance.”

The illuma “solution” integrates with a variety of practice management systems that PERC+IVA members use, according to the announcement, and the combination “allows illuma to turn what used to be purely patient education into action.”

Golden added, “Illuma has a very novel way to integrate into our systems and collect clinical data on large populations of patients. The ability to have a full turnkey solution is not only unique, but highly valuable for our practices, as eyecare professionals and mainstream health care continue to merge to offer the right patient care at the right time with the right provider.”