Advocacy News

The Academy is engaging with Federal Trade Commission officials to educate them on how onerous requirements in the agency's eyeglass rule would affect ophthalmology practices.

Bipartisan House and Senate legislation would take proactive steps to address the root causes of an increasingly broken pharmaceutical supply chain.

State legislatures are already moving to consider optometric scope of practice expansion in three states, including two where ophthalmology successfully defended patient safety last year.

The Academy’s advocacy efforts continue following our successful campaign to have problematic new local coverage determination policies for minimally invasive glaucoma surgery withdrawn at the end of 2023.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized a rule to reform prior authorization use in Medicare Advantage plans last week, advancing one of the Academy’s top advocacy priorities. Here is our analysis on how the rule will affect your practices.

The state’s House Committee on Health and Human Resources advanced a bill which allows optometrists to perform surgical procedures taught at a single accredited optometry school, without clarifying standards of education or training.

The Academy and an ophthalmology coalition met with Aetna leaders to discuss the payer’s decision to maintain its Medicare Advantage prior authorization requirement for all cataract procedures in Florida, after recently discontinuing the same program in Georgia.

Despite successfully defending patient safety in these two states last year, lawmakers have introduced bills to allow optometrists to perform laser and scalpel surgery.

Despite numerous communications, presentations, and meetings with the Utah Ophthalmology Society, the state’s Office of Professional Licensure Review has recommended optometric scope expansion to perform YAG and SLT laser surgery.

A bill authorizing optometrists to perform surgical procedures cleared the California State Legislature's Assembly Business and Professions Committee in an 11-7 vote Tuesday.