For Patients
Visit our New Public Education Microsite!
OAO's new Public Education microsite is dedicated to providing the important information you need about eye care and optometry. Find out more, click here to visit!
Did You Know?
In Ontario, there is one optometrist for every 10,162 residents. Optometric practices can be found in more than 200 towns and cities across Ontario, a level of service that means our members can provide in-depth eye and vision care to many patients - and we are always striving to increase our reach and improve our level of care!
51% of all Canadians have coverage for glasses or contact lenses. In Ontario, this number rises to 60%
- 1 in 6 children have vision problems and 80% of early learning is visual
- In 2001, Ontario's 1181 optometrists provided primary eye care services to nearly 3 million Ontarians
- According to Statistics Canada, the population of Ontario grew by 13.3% in the last decade. The number of Ontario seniors (age 65+) grew nearly twice as fast (25.8% growth)
- In the last 5 years the number of eye care services provided by optometrists to children grew by 28.3%. At the same time, the number of eye care services provided to seniors by optometrists grew by 61.5%
- 96% of the population of North America (Canada and US) have access to prescription drugs for the treatment of eye conditions from their optometrists
Eye Health Articles
As part of OAO's commitment to support and encourage the participation of our optometric community in your community, we diligently source knowledge and commentary from our member optometrists.
This section contains an extensive collection of eye health articles that have been generously provided by a number of OAO optometrists, including Dr. Todd Wilbee, who writes a regular column on optometric issues for the Windsor Star and has provided an extensive collection of his work for use here.
OAO President Dr. John Mastronardi, and OAO Past Presidents Drs. Bill Ulakovic and Christopher Nicol are also featured prominently.
Our thanks to our contributors and to the Windsor Star for the use of these articles.
