Company background

Mission

On order, 221st Medical Team (Optometry) provides world-wide optometry and optical fabrication support in any Unified Land Operations and Decisive Action in order to minimize the impact of ocular injury and disease and maximize vision readiness.

Unit History

The 221st Medical Detachment (Optometry) was activated on 17 October 2007. The detachment is designed to perform split based operations and therefore can deploy as two 3 person teams. Each team has an optometrist (67F), an optometry technician (68WP3) and an optical fabrication specialist (68H).

In June 2009, the 221st Medical Detachment deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The detachment was initially assigned under the 421st Multifunctional Medical Battalion (MMB) and later aligned under the 61st MMB. The detachment provided optometry and optical fabrication support to Multinational Division-North (MND-N) which covered the northern third of Iraq. The detachment conducted split based operations at Contingency Operating Base Speicher and Forward Operating Base Diamondback (Mosul). The detachment provided far forward support to the Warfighter by executing several optometry support jump missions to outlying Forward Operating Bases within MND-N. Providing "world-class" combat optometry operations the detachment executed 7,759 patient encounters and dispensed 4,677 optical devices during the deployment. The detachment redeployed to Fort Carson on 30 May 2010.