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THE FUTURE OF OPTOMETRY

PROVIDE CARE TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF YOUR LICENSE

JOHN RUMPAKIS, O.D., M.B.A.

OPTOMETRY’S FUTURE is bright, very bright. The question is not whether our future is bright, but if optometry is willing to do what is necessary to secure its place in the health care environment of the future.

There are two areas of opportunity, which are intrinsically intertwined, critical to optometry’s success: delivering full-scope care to an ever-increasing population and understanding our role in delivering refractive care.

POPULATION INCREASE

Certain things are immutable including the simple truth of supply and demand. Choose your study, it really doesn’t matter which, and you will see that the demand gap of the population for full-scope eye care is increasing. One study is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ “Physician Supply and Demand: Projections to 2020.” (See website for an illustration.)

You also will see that the supply differential between ophthalmology and optometry indicates that only optometry has the sheer workforce numbers to provide this care.

When demand increases and supply decreases, it is typically an inflationary event — prices go up. On the surface, one would assume that this upward pricing pressure would help to increase the bottom line for eye care providers. Dig deeper and it’s not that simple. In fact, despite our increased ability to provide full-scope eye care to meet the demands of the population, the profession is not rising to the challenge. Even if we look at something as simple as glaucoma, more prescriptions for glaucoma medication are written by non-eye care professionals than by optometrists. We also don’t recognize the epidemic of dry eye, issues with common problems, such as ocular allergy and contact lens drop out or work for the prevention of macular degeneration.

OUR ROLE IN REFRACTIVE CARE

Worse than that, to fit into the integrated outcome-based health care system of the future (today) the primary care-based decision makers don’t really know what our capabilities, specialties’ or scope of practice is. When I have assisted O.D.s in discussions and negotiations to join an Accountable Care Organization, it is clearly apparent that many, if not most, of the M.D.s we are working with believe we do nothing more than provide spectacles and contact lenses.

Sadly, in many cases they are right. We have failed to rise to the occasion and take advantage of the opportunity before us to reach out and educate this influential group about the care we are capable of delivering. Many O.D.s provide the same level of care that they provided 10, 20 or 50 years ago. Sure, the technology is better, but the end product is still just a prescription for glasses or contacts. In many cases, it isn’t even that — it’s simply a refraction — and heck, a machine can do that just as well if not better; just look at some of the new autorefractors with wavefront technology that produce even more data and information than a typical refraction. Refractive eye care may be our roots, our heritage and our foundation, but total eye care is our future.

SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY

The wattage of how bright our future can be is dependent on the individual action every optometrist takes. Practice to the fullest scope of your license! Diagnose and treat disease, both medical and refractive, learn and practice the difference between a refraction and a prescription, go to the greater medical community and educate it on what your education, license and capabilities are. Do these things and our future is bright. OM

DR. RUMPAKIS is founder, president and CEO of Practice Resource Management, Inc., a consulting, appraisal and management firm for healthcare professionals. Email him at John@PRMI.com, or visit tinyurl.com/OMcomment to comment on this article.