• President's Message
• Executive Director's Report
  • Convention 2014: Don't Miss the Fun! 
• Legal Corner
  • Question and Answer 
• Legislative Update
  • 2014 Legislative Season Recap
• Eye on Third Party Advocacy       
  • Medical Provider Pan
• Membership Development Committee Report   
• Calendar of Events
• Classifieds
• FOA Service Providers

Join us July 24th - 27th at the Boca Raton Resort & Club 
Regular registration ends June 20th! 
Register at www.floridaeyes.org
 

 
Your Board of Trustees met May 31 in Tampa to chart a path forward for your state association. Dozens of topics were covered, and it was a full and exhausting day, though productive. It has been a pleasure to work with such a talented team of leaders this past year. It is hard to believe that my tenure as your President is coming to a close in just under two months. I will lead just one more Board of Trustees meeting and the annual meeting at the convention before the very capable Dr. Barry Frauens takes the driver’s seat. As I mentioned last year in my acceptance speech, I would do my best to hit my apexes, take care of the equipment and depend on my pit crew to keep us on the track. As in any race, you can never predict what might happen. Even the most talented drivers get hit, spun out, have an engine or chassis failure, or get caught up in a wreck not of their making. I had a couple of those incidents to deal with this year, but managed to steer around them, stay on the track and remain competitive. Did we take the checkered flag? In most cases yes, in others we finished in the top ten. By and large, I think we had a winning season. 

Are there still challenges ahead? You bet. Since your profession is a legislated one, our involvement in this process is not a choice but a necessity to insure our future. Your Legislative Chair, Dr. Ken Lawson, has positioned your profession well in Tallahassee, and has defined what you truly do for the citizens of this state to the lawmakers. He has only been able to accomplish that with your help, both grassroots and financially. Unfortunately, since the passage of our oral medications bill just a year ago, it seems many feel that they no longer need to participate in our PACs like they once did. Please understand, this race isn't over, and it will never be over. Term limits have re-defined capitol politics, and re-election campaigns are now gearing up. Unfortunately, we are not currently well positioned to remain a force in Tallahassee. Please don’t allow all of our gains these past few years to evaporate due to complacency and apathy. Make the commitment to donate to OD-EYEPAC today. I cannot stress enough the importance of this. If our entire membership gives just $84.00 a month each, we can remain effective. However, the reality, and sad truth, is that less than 10% of you contribute anything at all. I hope it doesn't take a loss or an attack on our profession to awaken the membership. For those of you who experienced the post-op wars of the early 2000s, you will remember that we were in fact caught flat-footed, which nearly cost us the right to co-manage our patients. Your leadership team will do whatever we can to promote the visual welfare to all Floridians, but it can’t be done on the backs of so few. In the coming years, we are likely to see threats to our profession that we had never before considered. I assure you, they are on the horizon. Please get engaged with your time, energy and wallet. We truly cannot do it without your help.

As we prepare for our annual meeting in Boca Raton this July, I would ask each of you to look within and ask yourself what you can do for organized optometry. It could be volunteering in your local society, attending their meetings or becoming an officer. Get to know your local politicians and help them understand how we are capable of serving the public’s visual needs and welfare. Volunteer to help with their election or re-election campaigns. Reach out to your FOA liaison Trustee, and ask where you can help in the Committee structure of the FOA. I know there is a wealth of talent out there untapped, as I have witnessed it on my own Board. In short, get involved, get engaged, and get educated about what your association has to offer you, and more importantly, what you can offer to the FOA. Urge your colleagues to join. Lead by example. In doing so, your profession will flourish, you will have a greater sense of purpose and your practice will thrive as well.  

God Bless all of you and thank you for the opportunity and privilege to serve as your President this past year. It has been an honor. See you in Boca!
 
Stephen R. Kepley, O.D.
President, Florida Optometric Association
 



 

 
One of the common third party issues encountered by our colleagues continues to be getting accepted on an insurance company's medical provider panel. The main obstacle involves being told that in order to be on a medical provider panel, you first have to credential and become a provider on their vision provider panel. Nationwide, this is probably one of the most common issues facing optometrists and one that we have helped create. For decades, we have allowed third party payers and more importantly vision plans to perpetuate the myth that you can determine the type of exam the patient will need prior to the performance of a dilated, comprehensive eye exam. To protect our patient‘s sight, it is our responsibility to determine if there is the presence or absence of ocular or systemic pathology with every single patient encounter. As matter of plain truth and fact,  there is no substitute for this determination; no screening, no short cut, no telemetric scan that can serve to properly render this judgement and answer the simple question, "is my patient disease free or not?" Furthermore, only the training of an optometrist or ophthalmologist can make this judgement. Following the performance of the dilated eye exam, there can be a medical diagnosis or a vision diagnosis. Then, and only then, can you say if this patient encounter is a medical exam or a vision-related exam. Consequently, to only be able to provide care under one of this two possible outcomes, is not only problematic for the provider but inherently risky for the patient and ultimately "not cheaper" but  more costly to the health care system. 

Therefore it continues to be our responsibility, with every patient encounter and every communication with a third party payer, to educate them that every eye exam should be undertaken as a primary eye/health care, dilated and comprehensive eye exam. And that every patient encounter evaluates, comprehensively, for the presence or absense of ocular and/or systemic pathology.

This is our most difficult task, this education process of the third party payers. We all must become advocates for our patients and ambassadors for our profession in this never-ending education process.  

Additionally, it is still the third party committee's recommendation that you keep an updated copy of all your third party contracts. Make sure that you don't just sign a renewal of the agreement without seeing and maintaining a copy of the most recent form of that agreement.

Your third party committee, both at the state and national level, works day and night to represent optometry as competitive high value provider to third party payers. It is this committee's mission to provide education, updates, and work to improve relationships between our members and third party insurance vendors.

Tad Kosanovich, O.D.

The year is almost to its half way point for 2014. The convention is right around the corner and what better time to be an FOA member than now. For those that are members let’s look at what the association may have helped you with:

1.    Oral Drug Bill: We now have oral drug prescribing abilities.
2.    HIPAA: The new guidelines and how you may keep yourself and your office safe, not only from an outside individual, but also from an audit.
3.    Third Party: What changes to insurance networks and reimbursements have occurred.
4.    Billing: Are you Billing properly? Who’s responsible for anything submitted to Medicare or any insurance? Do you have your Billing Compliance Manual?
5.    Telemedicine: Where do we stand in the big picture when it comes to changes to the Law and are we safe?
6.    Legislative Issues including Telemedicine and Opticians Refracting.

There are some, however, who feel that being a member of the FOA can be exclusive of the AOA. The AOA deals with the national landscape and how our profession as well as health care may change within that landscape. The AOA decided to support a national board certification. The FOA, at the request of its members, voted against this directive at the national meeting. Though we did not support that particular decision, we do feel as an association that the AOA has the profession’s best interest in mind. If, in the future, national certification is necessary then the vehicle will already be in place. Thus, the dues that we pay as members, include those to the AOA.

If ever there was a time to encourage those around us to be members, it would be now. The amount of information being channeled through the local societies from the FOA is ever increasing. The role of an organized profession is one of the keys to continue to prosper and grow as a practitioner in the future.
Refer a fellow OD for membership. Increase our strength as a profession.  

See you in July at our annual convention!
Dr. Bryan Stam 






 

1113 E. Tennessee St.

Tallahassee, FL 32308

3160 Holly Springs Road

Marietta, GA  30062

(770) 565-7867