{"id":798166,"date":"2019-08-01T11:47:49","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T17:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=369390"},"modified":"2019-08-01T11:47:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T17:47:49","slug":"opinion-susan-knopf-when-they-come-marching-in-everybody-gets-a-checkup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-susan-knopf-when-they-come-marching-in-everybody-gets-a-checkup\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Susan Knopf: When they come marching in, everybody gets a checkup"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Local optometrist Dr. Jessica Hegewald has just returned to Summit County after spearheading a 10-day medical mission to serve Americans underserved by mainstream medicine. It isn\u2019t just a giant medical giveaway. Oh goody, if you live near Cortland, N.Y., you get free care. Nope.<\/p>\n

We have medical officers and personnel in our branches of service that need to be ready to deploy and render care on a large scale in an emergency. So instead of playing pretend war games, they treat real patients through Innovative Readiness Training. Many aspects of planning, equipping and staffing the program mimic real-world field operations. Instead of treating patients in medical facilities, the training program was conducted at Norwich High School and Homer Junior High School in upstate New York.<\/p>\n

Maj. Hegewald\u2019s optometric team examined 1,680 people. They checked for cataracts, glaucoma, performed diabetic eye exams and wrote prescriptions. They made 1,350 pairs of glasses that were handed out the same day or the next. If you are a soldier in battle and need new glasses, you need them now.<\/p>\n

Nick Tyler told the Army Reserve Medical Command<\/a> that he came to the training mission \u201c\u2026 to get services that are really difficult to get.\u201d And then he said something you don\u2019t hear every day from patients leaving the doctor\u2019s office. He said it was \u201ca lot of fun. \u2026 The service people are wonderful.\u201d Tyler said he has Medicare, and he\u2019s really happy with it, but services aren\u2019t always easy to get. Tyler said he participated in the training program three years ago and was happy to have an opportunity to do it again. He was delighted neither income nor age were barriers to care. \u201cI\u2019m always amazed at how pleasant the experience is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very organized \u2026 and very thorough,\u201d Marcey Hoffman told Medical Command<\/a>. \u201cEyeglasses are terribly expensive and that kind of prohibits a lot of people from getting glasses. \u2026 It\u2019s a great service.\u201d Hoffman said she has medical insurance, \u201cbut it doesn\u2019t pay for glasses. Last time, I paid over $800 for glasses.\u201d This time, her glasses cost her nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll military glasses are made by an arm of the Navy called (Naval Ophthalmic Support and Training Activity).\u201d Hegewald said. \u201c\u2026 They also have training requirements to maintain readiness in a deployed setting. They bring a team \u2026 and they are on-site, making the glasses as the optometrists write the prescriptions. Their turnaround time was a couple hours from when they received the prescription. It took us a day to get the prescriptions to them from one of our sites, and the finished glasses were returned the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInnovative Readiness Training events are the ultimate way to exercise joint cooperation and deployment medical skill sets in the U.S.,\u201d said Maj. Gen. William Shane Lee, Commander of the 3rd Medical Command Deployment Support, in a news release<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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Silverthorne resident Maj. Jessica Hegewald, known locally as Dr. J, examines a patient at a Innovative Readiness Training clinic in Homer, New York.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Part of the challenge is integrating service members from different commands. Medical personnel in the training program came from the U.S. Army, Army Reserve, National Guard, U.S. Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard and U.S. Navy Reserve. They work together to create real-world treatment centers that spring up in the field, just as those might in a battlefield or in a natural disaster, and serve American communities, filling real-world needs.<\/p>\n

Of course, \u201cThere\u2019s no Such Thing as a Free Lunch,\u201d to steal the title from famed economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman\u2019s 1975 book on public policy. For the record, the cost of the training program is borne by the training budgets of participating units. Military personnel and patients alike report it\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, it was a great mission that I was happy to be a part of \u2026 but also happy to be home. Humidity is not really my thing,\u201d Hegewald said. Communities can apply<\/a> to become the beneficiary of an Innovative Readiness Training, which matches training needs and community needs.<\/p>\n

Susan Knopf\u2019s column \u201cFor The Record\u201d publishes Fridays in the Summit Daily News. Knopf has worn many hats in her career, including working as an award-winning journalist and certified ski instructor. She moved to Silverthorne in 2013 after vacationing in Summit County since the 1970s. Contact her at sdnknopf@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local optometrist Dr. Jessica Hegewald has just returned to Summit County after spearheading a 10-day medical mission to serve Americans underserved by mainstream medicine. It isn\u2019t just a giant medical giveaway. Oh goody, if you live near Cortland, N.Y., you get free care. Nope. We have medical officers and personnel in our branches of service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-798166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 16:17:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}