Scope expansion, vision plan headway cited as AOA's 2024 highlights

Steven T. Reed, OD, provides the American Optometric Association's (AOA) most memorable wins of 2024, including reimbursement and fairness coverage regarding vision plans and scope expansion legislation.

Video transcript

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

Steven T. Reed, OD:

I would say that one of the first things is we continue to battle, as well as make progress, on the reimbursement and fairness coverage as it regards to vision plans. We've had an issue for quite a while with vision plans. I know in my own practice, I've been practicing for 30 years, and I don't even remember the last time that I received a pay increase. And so here we are; the average optometrist is working to pay their staff, pay their bills, and yet we're not getting any reimbursement to even cover the cost of living. So we're working to right the wrong in that area. We've had lots of discussions. We had 2 town halls last year to inform members about what was going on. We continue to work on both a federal level – the AOA, of course, works on a federal level with our DOC Access bill to avert some of the issues with vision plans there and then, of course, we assist states and continue to work with them in passing their state laws as their regards to their particular issues in state. So anyway, we were proud of our progress there. We continue to work on that, although we know we have quite a piece to go in that sense.

Other areas: we are very proud of the 12 states we have now that have laser privileges. Our Future Practice Initiative program is 1 that you may have heard of. It was started years ago with the intent of assisting states that wanted to go for meaningful scope expansion. Of course, all scope expansion is meaningful, but we wanted to make sure that we cross that laser line, because that really gets us closer to where we're actually trained within our optometry schools. And it's important to be able to practice at the level we're trained to benefit the patients that we serve. And so anyway, the FPI program not only assists them in giving a blueprint about successful actions, but at the very end, if a state has really worked hard, we're willing to come in and provide some extra funds to get them across the finish line, so to speak. Right now we have, I think it's 14 to 16 states that are going for scope expansion this year. And I can't give any names, but I will say there are a few that I'm expecting any day now that's going to happen. And that's not only a win in optometry, but that's a win with our patient care, because it really benefits them, especially in the rural communities. So I say vision plan issues and the scope expansion are two of the big areas that we have found success in and will continue to work on.

We're always adjusting the framework, because we learn more each battle that we have. We know exactly what the opposition is going to say, and we know, you know, who they're going to bring in next. And so every time we go through a battle, we say, "Alright, let's pull it back in, let's look at it," and we tighten it down. And it has really become a well-oiled machine over time.