AOA's recent legislative efforts and how to get involved with Dr Steven Reed

Steven T. Reed, OD, discusses recent legislative efforts, highlighting the failure of a spending bill provision to prevent a Medicare cut and the hope for future systemic fixes. He also mentions the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires extensive business ownership forms, and expressed hope for its delay or repeal. Reed emphasizes the importance of staying informed and getting involved in advocacy efforts, including reporting insurance and credentialing issues to a dedicated email, which recovered nearly $3 million for doctors last year. He encourages optometrists to join state associations and the AOA to contribute to ongoing advocacy and reform efforts.

Video transcript

Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Steven T. Reed, OD:

Well, there are a couple of things: at year end, there was a spending bill that was huge, and it had some provisions that would have helped us in there, which I'll go over that in just a moment. But of course, last minute, it got slashed, and so those kind of fell off. But 1 of the things that was in there is it would have provided some relief from the Medicare cut that happened as of January 1. Unfortunately, that did not happen, but we continue to push for that, and we're not just pushing for a patch the way Congress has done in the past. We need to fix that system, and that's not just us talk, and that's medicine in general. We've gotta provide a fix for this, and attach some kind of at least inflationary index to that. And so we're hopeful that the current administration will look to do just that, and we continue to advocate for it.

Another thing is the Corporate Transparency Act. That's the 1 where you have to fill out the business ownership forms for every corporation you have. And I'll tell you, personally, I have a lot of corporations, because I'm not just involved in eye care. I had to fill out 19 of those forms. Talk about regulatory burdenbecause that would have stopped, you know, as a result of the year end spending bill, but it didn't work. So we're very hopeful this administration is going to delay and eventually repeal that, because it really is unnecessary paperwork. But those are 2 of the main things right now.

First of all, stay informed, because there are so many things that we're doing every day that advocate for the profession that many optometrists don't even know about. I mean, the thing I've heard probably the most is, "What's AOA doing about this?" Well, we've been doing something about this or that, and I can show you. So stay informed and get involved, and certainly, if you are really, really wanting to get involved, we're always open to involve volunteers in our structure. One of the things that many of our members may not know goes back to that vision plan abuse issue I brought up before. We actually have a dedicated email that's called stopplanabuses@aoa.org, and that is like another employee, so to speak. That's the way I like to position that, because there are many times in our offices where we may have a denial for a claim or credentialing issues or just some type of insurance issue, but yet the fix may take hours, days, or even weeks, and doctors don't have the staff time to be able to dedicate to that. And so many will say, "Well, you know, it's 20, $25, don't worry about it. I'm gonna leave it alone, and we'll just keep moving forward." But – and I want to encourage the doctors out there, the members – to email anything like that to that stopplanabuses@aoa.org. That goes straight to the desk of our chief strategy officer, Kara Webb; her and her team last year brought back in almost $3 million to doctors' offices that would have been lost if they hadn't sent that in. And we're expecting even more this year.

An individual optometrist really doesn't need to take things into their own hands when we've got a system in place that's working. And so what we encourage them to do is, instead of doing that, rather to join us, because our state associations work very hard, we encourage you, if you're interested, and become a board member or be in the committee structure of your state. As I said, before we welcome anyone into our overall AOA structure, and we just want to make sure that they know what's out there, and that we will continue to work. It is encouraging when you're involved and see the momentum that we're making. That's the part that I think it would motivate optometry. I see so many, even friends of mine in the past, that they go to practice every day and they go home and it's the same thing over and over. Nothing wrong with that, but it can get depressing after a while just thinking that your life is not changing, but we're making some big changes every day. And I would encourage everybody to take note of that and join us.