BLOG: Dole Act finally recognizes, compensates VA optometrists
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
I was pleased to read that President Joe Biden signed the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act.
This bill adds optometrists practicing in the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics to the physician pay scale and allows for pay awards, bonuses and annual evaluations.
I had the opportunity to spend my externship at Philadelphia Naval Hospital and was inspired to spend my optometric career in a hospital setting. This included Lankenau Medical Center, Wills Eye Hospital and Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital. Practicing as an optometrist in a hospital setting is both challenging and rewarding and is certainly on par with physicians in both responsibility and workload.
I also had the unique opportunity to serve as a consultant and board member on the Accreditation Council on Optometric Education. In my early years in the role, I did site visits for optometric residency programs and had the good fortune to participate in the accreditation of many of the VA programs.
Site visits to VA programs were always an exciting adventure. Although they were all different settings and operational programs, the constant theme was excellence in clinical care. The preceptors in these teaching programs gained the respect of the traditional medical staff and moved optometry into the mainstream of medical care.
One of the most impressive elements of the practice of optometry in the VA was the complete and real time access to a patient’s entire medical chart. The VA system was one of the first to implement a comprehensive electronic medical record.
The Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture started in the late 1970s and was fully operational by the mid-1990s. Optometry was fully integrated into this, so not only did the optometrist have full medical chart access, but the eye care medical record and special eye testing were also fully accessible to all of the care team for each patient.
Optometry flourished in this integrated medical care model and set the standard for optometric residency programs and externship programs. The best and brightest of optometry flocked to these programs, and the VA continues to be a highly sought-out educational opportunity and an excellent career choice for optometrists.
It is with this background that I applaud the Dole Act. I want to congratulate the leaders of our profession who worked for the passage of this legislation to finally recognize and compensate VA optometrists. And, finally, I want to thank all of the optometrists who have trained and worked in the VA system, for their years of hard work in providing excellence in optometric education and clinical health care.
For more information:
Scott A. Edmonds, OD, FAAO, specializes in vision-based neurorehabilitation at Edmonds Eye Associates in Philadelphia. He can be reached at scott@edmondsgroup.com.
Collapse