Passage of Kentucky’s Optometry Bill into Law.
Gov. Beshear signed Kentucky’s optometry practice expansion bill into law yesterday. Thus ends the remarkable passage of Senate Bill 110 that in one fell swoop transforms the practice of optometry in Kentucky from correcting vision with lenses, to the practice of treating eye disease with medicine and surgery.
Much can be said about many aspects of this episode. For example, the erosion of the monopoly of MDs to practice medicine. However the special privilege of caring for the sick has been drifting away from us physicians for some time. Some of these sharings are not all bad: you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to manage an immunization schedule or treat a sore throat. I predict that we physicians will continue to share the responsibility of treating illness and that the pace of the sharing will increase dramatically with the inclusion of the concepts of wellness and disease prevention into our financial structure of treating illness. (There is no limit to the demand for wellness, disease prevention, or screening by the public; nor limit to the willingness of healthcare workers of all levels of competence to provide.) This optometry bill was not the only scope of practice legislation before this General Assembly. Why have not the others passed as well? Is this optometry bill a crack in the dam? Did we physicians do something to bring this on ourselves?
Changes in scope of practice are not occurring in isolation from other major shifts in the landscape of healthcare delivery. I am informed that the considerable majority of primary care physicians in Louisville are now direct employees of hospitals. A large and increasing fraction of specialists are also hospital employees. I predict this trend will do more to change the practice of medicine than the sharing of professional responsibilities with optometrists, or nurses for that matter. What is happening is that systems of medical care are largely replacing Mom and Doc operations. That’s probably for the better. Even in a given specialty, there is too much to know, too much to do, and too much efficiency required. What is most important is that the primary obligation of the physician to their patient retains its primacy. That is what we are most at risk to losing. That may not be for the good. Continue reading “OPTROT? Business as usual? Or both?”