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

The OT and poliboard had some pretty good battles over this last year.
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I'm all for it. Didn't hear the ophthalmologists saying shite when NP's, PA's, and cRNA's were given expanded roles. Hell, the procedures aren't that difficult and those guys make waaaay too much for what they do.

The difference is that dentists have done tooth extractions for >100 years conservatively..

You won't hear MDs complain about PAs. PAs already fall under the medical board. Now they will bitch about NPs and CRNAs. That's b/c they fall under the nursing board, who determines their scope of practice.

All you care about is money latigerdoc. You don't want worthy professionals raining on your parade. You want your little monopoly back

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1065 already passed the House

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And it passed like 2:1

Email your state senators ASAP if you feel even moderately strongly about this.



And for the record, if they changed the governing body to the LA State Board of Medical Examiners, a large number of people currently against the bill would very likely flip their vote. But they current want to perform surgery and not be governed by the current agency that regulates surgery, instead opting for an additional governing body.

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Optometrists in Oklahoma have been doing these procedures for over 20 yrs. Their complication rates are no higher than MDs.

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I hear this claim often. I haven't found a link suggesting it's true or false. Do you know where to find that one?

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What kind of schooling do these fake eye doctors have?

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They're not fake eye doctors. They're real doctors. They specialize in refractions moreso than surgery. They spend 4 years and occasionally an externship year. Their first 2 years are similar to medical school. Their second two are mostly clinical years.

This is opposed to ophthalmologists, who are trained to perform eye surgery. They do two years of hard sciences (same ones as above, essentially.), then two years of clinicals that span from psychiatry to things like cardiothoracic surgery and OB/GYN. Then they spend a year just like Internal Medicine doctors would (generally), followed by 3 years of specific eye surgery and clinic training. They then have the option to spend (on average 2) more years learning to do occuloplastic surgery, glaucoma, retinal diseases/surgery, corneal disease/surgery, pediatric ophthalmology (including surgery). I may be missing one, but I can't think of it at this time.

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)


ETA: I did forget one: Neuro-ophthalmology

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A separate licensing entity is bullshite. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

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Now,this is probably semantics, as I think you are probably referring to what I'm trying to explain but with a word choice that may not necessarily be universally accepted by those in/close to the field. They're not creating an Optometry board to license themselves. It already exists. There definitely is benefit to them having their own licensing entity (they're different fields doing related things). They want to expand their scope to include things currently covered by ophthalmologists (who have their own licensing board; again- different kind of doctors that just both happen to deal with the eye), but they don't want to be overseen by the State Board of Medical Examiners which currently oversees all eye surgeries that occur in this state. So it's not necessarily the licensing as it is the credentialing and the requirements to perform such surgeries. They could choose different requirements than those that already exist for ophthalmologists.