SAN FRANCISCO — Nationally-recognized glaucoma specialist Gregory L. Skuta, M.D.,has begun his term as the 117th president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons. Dr. Skuta, who was elected by the Academy's 32,000 eye physician and surgeon members, will hold the office for one year.
Dr. Skuta is president and CEO of the Dean McGee Eye Institute in Oklahoma City and serves as the Edward L. Gaylord professor and chair of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine's department of ophthalmology.
In his role as president of the Academy, Dr. Skuta will represent the profession within the broader field of medicine and serve as ophthalmology's advocate-in-chief to federal, state, local and global officials and organizations.
Alongside Academy Executive Vice President and CEO David W. Parke II, M.D., Dr. Skuta will focus on important issues and initiatives for the profession, including ophthalmic education; physician reimbursement and patient access; funding for vision research; the introduction of the Academy's IRIS® Registry, a national eye disease and condition patient database; and preparation by ophthalmologists for the implementation of ICD-10 the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision code set, which will be used by all healthcare providers beginning in October to report medical diagnoses.
Dr. Skuta has decades of leadership experience with the Academy, and has served on its Board of Trustees, its Committee of Secretaries and on many other Academy committees. In 2013, he was a recipient of the Academy's Life Achievement Honor Award. Dr. Skuta is currently on the Board of Directors for the Oklahoma Academy of Ophthalmology.
Dr. Skuta's background also includes roles with the American Glaucoma Society, the American Board of Ophthalmology, the World Glaucoma Association, the American Eye Study Club and the Journal of Glaucoma. He has also served as a principal investigator for the National Eye Institute-sponsored Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study and Collaborative Initial Glaucoma Treatment Study. Dr. Skuta is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Phi Beta Kappa and the University of Illinois College of Medicine Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He completed his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was chief resident, and a glaucoma fellowship at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami.
About the American Academy of Ophthalmology
The American Academy of Ophthalmology, headquartered in San Francisco, is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons — Eye M.D.s — with more than 32,000 members worldwide. Eye health care is provided by the three "O's" – ophthalmologists, optometrists, and opticians. It is the ophthalmologist, or Eye M.D., who has the education and training to treat it all: eye diseases, infections and injuries, and perform eye surgery. For more information, visit www.aao.org. The Academy's EyeSmart® program educates the public about the importance of eye health and empowers them to preserve healthy vision. EyeSmart provides the most trusted and medically accurate information about eye diseases, conditions and injuries. OjosSanos™ is the Spanish-language version of the program. Visit www.geteyesmart.org or www.ojossanos.org to learn more.
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