Advocacy and the POA

Over the past few weeks, I have been so impressed with POA doctors! On March 25th, more than 80 doctors and students attended the POA Lobby Day in Harrisburg. These volunteers met with legislators to discuss the bills that are so important to Pennsylvania optometrists and our patients. This day came together with the help of so many people and, while I can’t name everyone, there are a few people I want to recognize: our Legislative Affairs Committee and its chair, Dr. Rich Christoph, and especially Dr. Perry Umlauf. The day was made successful with tremendous support from POA Executive Director Joe Ricci and our awesome POA staff. Dr. Linda Casser, our State and National Education Chair, and her team designed the necessary handouts and training material for our doctors. Everyone worked together with our fantastic local society presidents to organize the volunteer doctors and students. Salus University and, in particular, Drs. Mike Mittelman and Melissa Trego were very supportive; they even rented a bus to bring the students to the capitol! So many other people were involved to make this day a success including our lobby teams, our board and, most importantly, the volunteer doctors and students who took the time away for their offices, school, and their families to come to Harrisburg to represent us. Thank you very much, everyone! This day was extremely well coordinated; we had over 25 meetings with our legislators. In addition, many other meetings have taken place in our local districts both before and after Lobby Day. 

In early April, a dozen Pennsylvania doctors gathered in Washington, D.C. for three days to represent our state at AOA on Capitol Hill 2019. In total, there were over 600 doctors and students present at this meeting! I would like to thank our Pennsylvania delegation for their time and effort. We had many meetings with our Senators and Representatives in D.C. and numerous meetings occurred both before and since then in our local districts. During our time in D.C., Pennsylvania was proud to have one of our own legislators, Congressman Guy Reschenthaler, win the AOA Healthcare Leadership Award, which was presented to him by his keyperson and long-time POA member, Dr. Bob Bittel.
Photos from both of these events can be seen in this issue of the Keystoner. More are available on our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

As you read this, I hope you are as proud of our POA volunteers and staff as I am. If you are reading this and inspired to help, there are several opportunities. Please consider serving as a keyperson to your state and/or national legislators. This is easier than it sounds; all of the information you will need can be found on our website under the Advocacy tab. Dr. James Deom is the chair of our Keyperson Committee and he and his committee would be happy to help you. Another way we could use help from everyone is by donating to our PAC (Political Action Committee) on the state and national levels. Contribution forms are available at http://pennsylvania.aoa.org/documents/PA/POA-POPAC-pledge-form.pdf. Dr. Greg Caldwell, the chair of the POPAC Committee, would also be happy to assist you. 

Protecting our profession and ensuring we move forward is an immense responsibility and we need everyone’s help!

Lori Gray, O.D.
POA President

Save Your Vision Month and more

As you all know, March is Save Your Vision Month. This is a great opportunity for all of us to reach out to our communities and bring awareness to vision, eye health, eye safety, and more. The optometric profession comes in many different forms. Some of us work in patient care, others are educators or working in the industry. No matter where our optometric careers have taken us, the one thing we all have in common is that we are out in our communities helping people. We help people see better, we help people figure out what is wrong and how to best handle the situation, we help people learn and understand, and we help people heal. Today, I write asking you to help one more cause: our profession.

Our profession needs your help. We need your help legislatively, financially, and, most importantly, we need your time. We are currently working on several legislative initiatives including scope modification and children’s vision legislation. The help we are asking for can come in many different formats. First, we need doctors and students at Lobby Day. This is our opportunity to make a statement to our legislators. It is our biggest opportunity to educate them on our remarkable profession and the value we bring to our patients and our communities. For many of us, time is our most valuable asset. I am hoping you can give some time to our profession on March 25th at Lobby Day in Harrisburg. You can sign-up to attend here: https://pennsylvania.aoa.org/education-and-events/march-2019-x26597.

As we work towards our legislative goals, we also need your help financially. POPAC donations make a difference and every little bit helps. Because of your contributions, during 2018, we were able to attend 185 legislative breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and events. POPAC giving allowed us to support 76 Representatives, 38 Senators, six candidates, and six political action committees of the House and Senate. Each of these contacts was another opportunity to tell Optometry’s story. Many of our members give monthly donations on their credit card and this is extremely helpful. It allows us to anticipate our POPAC budget and plan for the most effective ways to use these funds. I ask each of you to please consider monthly contributions to POPAC. It really is simple; all you have to do is fill out this form: https://pennsylvania.aoa.org/documents/PA/POA-POPAC-pledge-form.pdf. For those of you who are already donating monthly, thank you!

My final ask of you today is for your help promoting optometry in your community. For example, one of our local societies has held a community awareness program every year from 1979 to 2017. Each year, the Anthracite Optometric Society arranged a massive 16-school, 2000-child program, the Save Your Vision Project. The second-grade students from each of these schools would participate in a coloring contest and winners were chosen from each individual classroom with an overall winner being selected from each school. The winners from each school would then gather at an awards ceremony to celebrate their accomplishments and receive their awards over lunch with the Project’s mascot, Seymour Safely. The children loved this special event and it brought great awareness to vision and eye safety. The local newspapers would cover the event, further promoting its importance. I would like to take a moment here to thank the tremendous efforts of the Anthracite Optometric Society, Dr. Gary Scheib, Dr. Shannon Scheuren, and everyone who made this event possible. Unfortunately, due to time and budgetary constraints within the local society, this program was not able to be held the last two years. I wanted to write about this fantastic project today to point out what a difference even one small group can make. I would like to see us all work together on projects that promote our goals, bring awareness to our communities, and have some fun in the process.

Many of our other local societies participate in important community events, also. My goal today is not to promote a specific event or project, but ask you simply to participate. These projects may be major events like Anthracite’s Save Your Vision Project or they may be smaller events like speaking to local groups or writing a public education article for your local newspaper. The POA would like to assist you with this endeavor. Our Clinical Care Committee is currently working on writing white papers to bring awareness to important vision and eye health concerns. In past years, member advocates for children’s vision created a presentation that is available for our doctors to present to school nurses around the commonwealth. These are just a few examples. If you have other ideas, I would love to hear them. Please consider donating your time to help our profession and our communities!

Thank you!

Lori Gray, O.D.
POA President

What's to come in 2019

Happy New Year and welcome to 2019! I wish you all a healthy and prosperous year! According to the Chinese Zodiac Calendar, 2019 is the year of the Pig. The Feng Shui Kua Number of 2019 is 8. For the POA, I am looking at 2019 as a year of leadership. Every great organization needs to prepare its current and future leaders for what lies ahead. Some people are born leaders and some people need to work a little harder to get there. One thing is for sure, there is not a single person among us who couldn’t benefit from some training. The best part of this training is that it will carry forward through all aspects of our lives. This will benefit us in our personal lives, our professional lives, and our philanthropic/volunteer lives.

This will be a fantastic year for the POA! I can say this with certainty because of the hard work and dedication of our staff, our Board of Directors, and all our volunteers. I would like to take a moment to thank each of you for what you do for optometry and for this great organization on the local, state, and national levels. Optometry was ranked the 23rd greatest job on the US News and World Report list of 100 Best Jobs of 2018. I am sure most of us agree, there is nothing else we would rather be doing with our lives. For me, optometry is the #1 best job I could ask for, but just in case you were wondering, Software Engineer was #1 according to the report.

As you are aware, in Pennsylvania, our legislative cycle is two years. 2017-2018 was a great cycle for optometry. This was thanks to the hard work of our Legislative Affairs Committee, our Keyperson Committee, our Political Action Committee, our State and National Education Committee, all of our volunteer leaders and, most importantly, our members. It was awesome to see our members unite for our profession and our patients as we mobilized the most effective grassroots campaign this organization has seen in years! Thank you, everyone, and job well done! As we look forward to our next legislative cycle, 2019-2020, we will be exploring children’s vision legislation, scope modification, and more.

We have a few more goals for 2019, including improving communication. I realize this seems like such a simple goal, but our organization is vast. We have so many tasks and projects happening simultaneously. With that, it’s a challenge to keep everyone on the same page. Our goal is to increase communication between our members, our chairs, our Board of Directors, and our staff. And last, as an association, we must answer the challenge that was brought forth in the House of Delegates of May 2018. We need to work together to increase our non-dues revenue. We have created a new committee led by Dr. Scott Edmonds to focus on this issue. I will keep you posted as there are updates.

The Table of Organization has been set for 2019 with a great mix of seasoned and fresh leaders. At the November meeting, our leaders and members had an extremely productive strategic planning session. We created many new action plans and have already started to put them into motion. I promise you that I will do my best to serve this organization as your president. However, as we all know, an organization does not get its strength from its president. An organization gets is strength from its members. We have great members doing great work! I may be biased, but 2019 is going to be a pretty fantastic year!

Thank you,
Lori Gray, O.D.

Another two-year legislative cycle closes

Dear Colleagues,

As 2018 comes to an end, another two-year legislative cycle closes for organized optometry in Pennsylvania. I am grateful for your ongoing work to protect and advance our profession at both the state and national levels and your unending efforts to safeguard the visual welfare of our patients. Let’s take a closer look legislatively at what we have accomplished together in two short years.
Our vision plan bill, SB 257, amended into HB 1013 for administrative reasons, passed both the Senate and House and is awaiting the signature of Governor Wolf. This law, when enacted, will serve to level the playing field between providers and vision care plans. I congratulate Drs. Paul Lobby and Greg Caldwell in conjunction with the Legislative Affairs Committee for accomplishing this goal.
The handicapped placard and license plate bill, passed in 2017, now includes optometrists on the list of providers who have the privilege of helping our visually handicapped patients cope with their visual challenges. Many thanks to Dr. Bob Owens and the POA’s Motorist Vision Committee on attaining this goal on behalf of our patients.

We were in a position to pass a third bill, our scope of practice modernization bill; however, we came up short. I understand the frustration we all feel with this. It is even more difficult knowing it passed the full Senate by a bipartisan 32-17 margin and that we were told we had the votes necessary for passage in both the House Professional Licensure Committee and the full House. Unfortunately, the Chairman of the House Professional Licensure Committee, State Representative Mark Mustio, chose not to run the bill and it died in his committee.

While this bill didn’t cross the finish line, we are further today than we have been in 16 years. A large part of our success was the incredible contribution of the membership in the form of letters, faxes, and phone calls to legislators as part of our advocacy campaign. It made a substantial impact. The momentum is with us as we move into another legislative cycle. You will be called upon in 2019, under the leadership of incoming president Dr. Lori Gray, to do your part. The challenge will be to reach out to our elected officials and point out the facts.

I want to thank the POA volunteer leadership, our Board of Directors, POA staff, and most importantly, each of you, our members. We are fortunate to have such a strong association. Please know your dues, your POPAC contributions, and your membership matter. Thank you for your hard work, tireless efforts, and support! A good friend once told me this is a thankless job and I’m here to say THANK YOU! It has been a pleasure to serve as your 2018 POA president. I look forward to many years of continued service to our profession and protecting the visual welfare of our patients.

Respectfully Submitted,

Rebecca Wincek Bateson, O.D.
POA President

Hard Work Boulevard

All roads that lead to success must pass through hard work boulevard at some point. 
- Eric Thomas

For over a decade, optometrists have been advocating for our patients to gain access to safe, innovative, and quality eye care. While technology is advancing at lightning speed, optometrists are practicing under an Optometric Practice Act that was last modified 16 years ago. In my last editorial, I described where Pennsylvania stands in the nation providing care to our patients. The great state of Pennsylvania is falling behind and new graduates are leaving to work in states that permit them to practice at their highest level of training.

• PA is one of only two states that continue to use an outdated, antiquated process to authorize new medications for the treatment of eye disease by relying upon approval by the Secretary of Health. 
• PA is one of 8 states that still need the hydrocodone fix.
• PA is one of 10 states that do not permit an optometrist to give an injection to a patient for anaphylactic reaction.

The POA’s efforts to move optometry forward are close to paying off, but victory is going to take effort from every member. It will require a small fraction of your time and support of our Political Action Committee with a modest monetary contribution.

First, every member must be involved. Please contact Dr. James Deom, chair of our Keyperson Committee, to find out how you can help in our grassroots campaign. Dr. Deom can be reached at dr.deom@gmail.com. This fall, it is critical to attend a local fundraiser for your legislator and maintain a positive ongoing relationship. A visit to your legislator’s local office to express your support for the legislation POA supports is crucial to our success. Information about the various bills is found on the POA website under Advocacy.

Next, make a financial contribution to our POA Political Action Fund, POPAC. This money is used to support legislative fundraisers in Harrisburg and around the Commonwealth. Our lobbyists in Harrisburg, along with our Executive Director, attend many fundraisers on our behalf, and it is POPAC funds that allow them to do that. Supporting our legislators is an important way to make the POA known. Ophthalmology, vision plans, and insurance companies all have funds working against us. The POA asks for a $500 annual contribution. To make your contribution, contact Ilene from the POA at ilene@poaeyes.org.

The opportunity is upon us, as an association and as optometrists, to pass through the hard work boulevard of the legislative arena. There is a critical, small window of opportunity of approximately 8-10 legislative session days left through the middle of October to pass three pieces of legislation—our Scope Modification bill (SB 668), the Vision Benefits bill (SB 257), and the Telemedicine bill (SB 780). The POA is the only group that advocates legislatively for you and your patients. I am humbled by your continued support of your POA Board and your association.

Becca Wincek-Bateson, O.D.

POA President

Where does Pennsylvania stand?

As president of the Pennsylvania Optometric Association, one of my volunteer duties includes attending the American Optometric Association’s Optometry’s Meeting, which was held in Denver, Colorado, from June 20 to 24 this year. While at the President’s Council, I gathered with other association presidents, president elects, vice presidents, and executive directors for a valuable opportunity to hear what is happening across the nation, both legislatively and with third party payers. For the last two years, I’ve heard of the battles many states are having legislatively, just as we are here in Pennsylvania. I want to take the time to update you where Pennsylvania stands in the nation.

Pennsylvania is one of two states that continue to use an outdated, antiquated process through the Secretary of Health to authorize new medications for the treatment of eye disease. This process undeniably delays care to the citizens of the Commonwealth. Currently, when a new medication is approved by the FDA for treatment of eye disease, we must request approval by the Secretary of Health and wait for approval. This process takes, on average, six to nine months. 

Pennsylvania is one of seven states that still need the hydrocodone fix. Access to care is crucial to Pennsylvania citizens. Optometrists, unlike ophthalmologists, are able to provide care to 99.9% of Pennsylvania. Doctors of optometry are currently practicing in 65 of the 67 Pennsylvania counties. Ophthalmologists have no direct in-county providers in 11 counties, forcing patients in 15% of the state to travel for care that could otherwise be provided by an optometrist. This means that, in those counties, optometrists are the only eye care provider providing access to eye care for 75,039 urban residents and 204,183 rural residents. The two counties in which optometrists are not currently practicing are also without an ophthalmologist. These counties lacking a local eye care provider are Forest and Cameron; together they comprise 2,677 urban residents and 10,124 rural residents. The population of Forest County is 100% rural.

Pennsylvania is one of 11 states that do not permit an optometrist, through the Optometric Practice Act, to give an injection to a patient for anaphylactic reaction. By law, even school bus drivers and crossing guards are permitted to give an injection. 

Currently, there are two pieces of legislation in the general assembly that affect optometry. Senator Ward’s Senate Bill 257 (SB257) provides Pennsylvania’s citizens protection from the actions of Vision Care Plans. The second is Senator Gordner’s Senate Bill 668 (SB668), to modernize Pennsylvania optometrists’ scope of practice. Please join me in the fight to pass SB257 and SB668 to ensure that our patient’s, the residents of Pennsylvania, receive the highest quality, most cost-effective eye care possible and protection from vision plans. More information and resources on these bills can be found on the POA website at www.poaeyes.org under the password-protected Advocacy section.

Rebecca Wincek-Bateson, O.D.
POA President

June 4, 2018 – Optometry at the Capitol Day

Dear POA Members,

While April showers brings May flowers, the POA’s lobby day on June 4th will bring optometry’s voice to Harrisburg. I am excited to invite you to attend a legislative action day on Capitol Hill on Monday, June 4, 2018 as we educate our elected officials about the important role optometrists play in the vision health of Commonwealth residents. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both the House and Senate members, who were visited by POA doctors in October of 2017, and we want to continue riding that momentum with a second round of visits.

Never attended a lobby day before? No worries! Our day will begin with a dynamic and information-filled program ensuring you are prepared for discussions with your legislator. If you prefer, we can pair you with an experienced optometrist to join you for your legislator visit. You will learn about two current legislative efforts impacting optometry and our patients.

The first is Senator Ward’s SB257, “Quality Eye Care for Insured Pennsylvanians”. This bill provides Pennsylvania’s citizens protection from the actions of Vision Care Plans. These plan designs often attempt to restrict the patient’s freedom of choice by dictating the suppliers and brands of products covered by their plans. As these companies continue to vertically integrate, they increasingly force our patients into products that financially benefit the Vision Care Plan, at the expense of patient choice. The bill also helps to limit the discounts that our members are forced to give, limiting it to services and products that are actually covered by the plan.

The second is Senator Gordner’s bill to modernize Pennsylvania optometrists’ scope of practice. Currently, optometrists are subject to some outdated regulations in the Optometric Practice Act. Any new medications need to be approved by the Secretary of Health, resulting in a delay in our patients having availability to new and beneficial treatments. For example, when Xiidra was introduced last summer, it took about four months for it to be approved. Another regulation requires optometrists consult with a medical doctor when a patient’s treatment exceeds six weeks. This requirement was not included when the scope was modified to include glaucoma. Obviously if there is no issue with optometrists treating glaucoma beyond six weeks, there should not be an issue with dry eye or allergy drops either. It is definitely time for these outdated regulations to be removed. The bill will also allow optometrists to prescribe hydrocodone again, which was lost when it was reclassified as a level 2 narcotic, and allow injections for anaphylaxis and into the upper and lower eyelids. 

For this day to be successful, please block off your patient schedule now for Monday, June 4, 2018 and plan to attend the 2018 Optometry at the Capitol Day. Your voice is important and your participation will make an impact. Our political action days in Harrisburg continue to grow; it is time for you to join us in advocating for our patients so the General Assembly recognizes the strength and importance of organized optometry.

Rebecca Wincek-Bateson, O.D.
POA President