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Veterans Eye Treatment Safety Act a priority for ophthalmology advocates
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Numerous advocacy groups are joining in a political struggle to keep optometrists from performing eye surgery in the Veterans Affairs hospital system.
The U.S. House Veterans Affairs committee met yesterday to discuss the issue. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the current issue breaches a pledge made by VA facilities in 1998, that eye surgery was to be performed by ophthalmologists only. The house bill, titled the Veterans Eye Treatment Safety Act (H.R. 3473), was introduced in November. The bill is sponsored by Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla.
According to the AAO, an optometrist at the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center in Wichita, Kan., gained surgical privileges from the VA facility there. The VA’s policy gives credentialing privileges to local facilities. The Kansas facility granted surgical privileges to an optometrist licensed in Oklahoma, where optometrists have certain laser surgical rights. Oklahoma is the only state where optometrists have such rights.
An AAO press release said the facility is preventing optometrists from practicing surgery, but the AAO and associated groups want to prevent the system from granting such rights again. Among the groups seeking to disallow optometrists from performing surgery are the AAO, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons and various veterans’ affairs groups.