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AOA announces formation of project team to explore board certification
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ATLANTA – The American Optometric Association announced here during the SECO International Conference that a group of six optometric organizations has formed a project team to explore a board certification process for optometry.
The American Academy of Optometry, the Association of Regulatory Boards of Optometry (ARBO), the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry, the National Board of Examiners in Optometry and the American Optometric Student Association join the AOA in this endeavor. According to a joint statement issued by these six groups, they have chosen to address board certification “because the profession has demonstrated a readiness to consider the issue in a comprehensive, inclusive manner.”
Measure of continued competence needed
Ten of the 57 “preferred futures” resulting from the AOA-organized Optometry 2020 Summits related to competence and certification, the joint statement said. In addition, one of the outcomes of the ARBO-organized National Optometric Continuing Education Conference addressed reassessing continued competence and board certification. “Finally, some optometric organizations have already created elements of board certification, including educational tracks and testing for advanced competence in specialty areas,” the statement said.
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AOA President-Elect Kevin L. Alexander, OD, PhD, said at the SECO press conference, “These groups have met over the last few years, had a number of summits, surveyed the landscape and feel there’s a need to develop a process to demonstrate continued competence – advanced competence beyond licensure.
“Right now in optometry, our only credential for demonstrating competence is licensure,” Dr. Alexander continued. “That’s an entry-level credential. It’s time to take another look at a credential to demonstrate advanced competence.”
In a letter to AOA members, Dr. Alexander said that the organizations involved have also “determined that there is an urgency and interest in developing a process to demonstrate continued and advanced competence to the public as ‘pay for performance’ advances and third-party payers and government agencies demand accountability.”
According to an AOA press release, this project is being undertaken because “board certification is the ‘common currency’ of continued and advanced competence in health care.”
Concept introduced in 1999
The concept of board certification was introduced before the AOA House of Delegates in June 1999 by outgoing AOA president John A. McCall Jr., OD, for many of these same reasons and it initially met with tremendous support. To implement the effort, the AOA formed the American Board of Optometric Practice (ABOP), which developed a board certification program. The AOA’s plan was met with significant controversy within the profession, and by June 2001 the AOA halted the initiative and dissolved ABOP.
“One of the things the profession learned is that everyone who has a major stake in this needs to be involved and have a mark on the final product,” Dr. Alexander said at the press conference. “ABOP was put together by one organization, the AOA. It was a top-down program that did not have sufficient input from all of the organizations across the board in optometry. The model was put together, and then organizations that had issues with it aired their differences in the press and in white papers. Because we’re going to have everyone in the room at once, we hope that all of the political differences will be worked out as the model evolves.”
Dr. Alexander said in his letter to AOA members that a prototype will be developed to “allow the profession to see what a board certification process will look like. We can then clearly discuss the merits and drawbacks to board certification.”
He added in the letter that a board certification process would not be implemented without approval from the AOA House of Delegates.
Challenges expected
“We have some challenges [ahead],” Dr. Alexander said at the SECO press conference. “ABOP was a difficult time. I chaired the conference that brought the ABOP to an end, and there were a lot of hard feelings. But time has passed. We have pay-for-performance and third-party payers looking for measures of competence — looking for how optometry stacks up when they’re comparing health care. I’m just hoping people give it a chance.”
Randolph E. Brooks, OD, AOA secretary-treasurer, was named as chairman of the project team. “The next step is to accumulate the vast amounts of information on board certification from the past,” he said at the press conference. “We’ll have an open communication process. This will take 1 or 2 years to come to fruition.”