re: Optometry: LA HB 1065/SB 568: What if your Louisiana Eye Surgeon is NOT an MD?

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The MD route offers less time on the eye during school but more during residency than the others get during school. The OD route offers more time during the original 4 years in eye clinics with little to no surgical training, and less likely any sort of fellowship in any certain part of the eye (though they do exist)

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This is a decent summary. But residency is 1 year of internship and 3 intense years of clinical/surgical training (60 hour work weeks) + studying in your "free time". I'm living it right now. I'd find it hard to believe that the OD route gets anywhere near the clinical (not to mention surgical) hours that MDs get. 2 years of "optom med school" + 2 years of clinical training (as a student) does not equal an ophthalmology residency. I've worked hand in hand with optom students.

These genius leaders will legalize dangerous raw milk and eye surgery done by non-surgeons but pot possession is still a capital offense.

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and if I were in it for the money, I wouldn't be in eye care

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You guys use way too many darn expensive gadgets.
Your overhead on equipment alone has to be enormous. Unfortunately, that gross income is coming down for basically anyone in a non-cash paying specialty. Primary Care salaries are seeing an increase, from all I've read, unusually enough.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an ophthalmologist. I obviously am not in favor of this bill. If it passes, I have no problem at all competing with optometrists. I am completely confident in my abilities and my surgical results.

You don't learn to do surgery in a weekend course as is being proposed in this bill. I did five years of residency after medical school. I had my share of complications and problems during that time. I learned something from each one of them that made me a better doctor.

The secret to performing surgery well isn't just knowing what to do. It's knowing what NOT to do! It's also knowing what to do after you did what you weren't supposed to do.

You just can't learn that the way that is being proposed in this bill. You just can't. It takes years to learn that skill.

Even if this passes, I don't believe it is going to hurt me financially at all. For me, this isn't about money. It's about patient safety.

If you happen to disagree with me, I respect your opinion. This is a free country and you are entitled to your opinion- no matter how wrong it may be!

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EYEDOCNO

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In the interest of full disclosure, I am an ophthalmologist.

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I thought it was pretty obvious

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EYEDOCNO

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In the interest of full disclosure, I am an ophthalmologist.

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Thanks for letting us know Dr.Singer

In case you're referring to me, specifically, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Still a med student (and heavily considering applying for an Ophth spot), currently, but I've learned, in all of medicine/surgery, that I don't learn nearly as much from a "procedure gone right" as one that was really, really difficult. This isn't to say that the patient suffered- most of the surgeon's I've worked with pulled their stuff together/got creative, and everything worked out OK. I question the ability of someone to achieve similar results without seeing a similar volume of patients/logging X number of procedures. Unfortunately, the system in LA is a terrible one for this to take place. There are no schools here, so the optometrists coming here perform these procedures are either being trained elsewhere, or not until they're in practice. I can't see how a full-time practicing optometrist has time to see the number of patients for these surgeries that wouldn't go to an ophthalmologist to begin with. Further, I question the ability of anyone who's been in practice for years already to perform these procedures, as it's been several years since they have performed them if they're not leaving the state to do so.


I'm sure in the end it will all work out well. For the patients' sake though, I will definitely recommend against seeing an optometrist who hasn't been through a rather extensive fellowship program designed to teach these procedures. Even then, I'm probably at least 5 years of published data from comfortably saying "yeah, they're doing just as good a job consistently."

You are probably right, it is fairly obvious.


But remember, we are dealing with the OT here.

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I thought this shite ended once we stopped hearing about it a while back.

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It was voted down last year. It was revised and reintroduced this year. The House version has passed. I am not sure when the Senate version is going to the floor; I haven't looked.