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Optometrist surplus will worsen
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To the Editor:
In the June Primary Care Optometry News letters to the editor, Dr. Bruce Moore argued that there are inadequate numbers of ODs to provide the comprehensive exams of all preschool children, as the American Optometric Association recommends. (“Comprehensive exams for all children not possible”)
AOA President Dr. David Cockrell replied to Dr. Moore that there were enough ODs to provide these comprehensive exams because the 2012 Lewin Group reports estimated only 3.7% of optometry’s workforce would be needed to provide them.
Dr. Cockrell could have mentioned that the Lewin Group reports found a 32% surplus of optometrist manpower [“excess capacity”] in 2012, to prove there were plenty of optometrists available to see preschool children. But he, and the AOA, still characterize the Lewin Group as predicting an “adequate supply” of eye professionals in the future rather than the “surplus” or “excess capacity” of ODs it found.
The Lewin reports document the surplus of optometrists in 2012 due to new optometry schools begun in the past decade, with still more schools in the planning stages.
Lewin also found other signs of this surplus, as its national OD survey determined that the great majority of optometrists were unhappy with their income and many practiced at two or more sites (40% of those 30 to 39 years old and even 20% of those 50 to 60 years old).
This failure to recognize the optometry surplus, which will get worse as graduation rates keep rising and the density of optometrists per 100,000 reaches record highs, is the optometry equivalent of the “emperor has no clothes.”
The Lewin Reports are free to AOA members, and an independent analysis of the oversupply of optometrists is available at www.charlesmullen.com.
Kenneth Myers, PhD, OD
Big Rapids, Mich.
Myers.kenj@gmail.com
- References:
- The Lewin Group, Eye Care Workforce Study: Supply and Demand Projections. Executive Summary. April 25, 2014.
- Mullen CF. Is Optometry on the Same Path as the Legal Profession? www.charlesmullen.com/optometry-on-same-path-as-legal-profession/. Posted February 6, 2015. Accessed August 17, 2015.