Prospectus
MEMBERSHIP NEWS & UPDATES
VOL. 47 | ISSUE 3 | 2021
Letter from the President By Viola Kanevsky, OD
“ If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.” Dan Rather The journey to gaining oral prescribing privileges in NYS has certainly been long and fraught with difficulties, but we are almost there. I say “almost,” because though our governor has signed our bill into law, we have two years to go till full implementation. The work of creating the infrastructure and support system required to certify our members is now being undertaken at full steam by a task force comprised of NYSOA Board members, legal advisors, and SUNY Optometry faculty and staff. In addition to thanking all the people who struggled so long and hard to bring us to this juncture, and who continue to work overtime to make sure NYS doctors of optometry are among the best trained in the world to deliver state-of-the-art eyecare, I’d like to discuss the history of scope restrictions in health care and address the concerns of those individuals, OD, MD, and layperson alike, who continue to harp on the dangers of scope expansion. The Twelve Tables, one of the earliest legal codes, forbade health workers from providing poisons. It is the earliest such code on record and dates to 450 BC. Early Greek and Christian law forbade providing deadly or abortive drugs. By the ninth century, providers started to form medical guilds, and by the tenth century they were engaged in certifying professionals and overseeing medical training. In the 18th
COVID-19 Resources The NYSOA and AOA are committed to supporting and serving members during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please visit our resources pages online and contact us with specific requests or questions. NYSOA COVID-19 Resources: www.nysoa.org/covid-19 Latest updates from the American Optometric Association: www.aoa.org/covid-19/covid-19-latest-updates New York State Updates: coronavirus.health.ny.gov
century, healthcare was largely unregulated in America, but by the end of the 19th century, the AMA had established medical associations in most states, and by the 1930s, these associations effectively advocated for restrictions on the practice of medicine—restrictions that governed whether providers could advertise their services as doctors or physicians as well as delineating the services that practitioners could legally provide. Mancur Olsen wrote in The Logic of Collective Action that “it is much more difficult for groups that are large and diffuse (patients) to organize and advocate for their interests in a democratic system than it is for a small, organized group of people with a narrow interest (doctors).” As a result, policy reflects the interests of groups like physicians rather than patients. Of course, larger, organized, wealthier groups (such as MDs) leverage more power in our system than smaller, organized groups, with less capital at their disposal (such as ODs). Lest you think that these large groups of physicians always hold the good of the public as their guiding principle, let me give you an example of how they have historically misused, or at best failed to use their significant power to effect social good. During the Jim Crow era some states mandated the racial segregation of hospitals and medical societies. The AMA, vastly more powerful in terms of sheer numbers of members than it is today (in the early 1950s, about 75% of US physicians were AMA members while today fewer than 25% of practicing physicians pay dues), refused to intervene when its member associations refused to admit black physicians to its association and effectively excluded black doctors who were continued on page 3
| Inside | LEGISLATIVE UPDATE........................................................ 6 PRESIDENT'S COMMENTS ON ORALS BILLS..................... 6 DOING NICE THINGS FOR PEOPLE..................................... 9 REFLECTIONS FROM THE INNOVATION CONFERENCE..... 10 CHOROIDEREMIA – CHOROIDER-WHAT?......................... 12 COUNSEL’S CORNER........................................................ 13 THANK YOU TO OUR BUSINESS PARTNERS..................... 15
