Advocacy News

National Eye Institute Director Michael F. Chiang, MD, visited the Academy’s D.C. office to outline the institute’s priorities and how to achieve our vision research funding goals amid tense budget negotiations in Congress.

Companion legislation introduced in the state’s House and Senate would allow optometrists to perform a variety of surgeries and grant the Kansas State Board of Examiners in Optometry power to add more procedures in the future.

The Utah legislature is seeking to expand optometric scope to include two laser surgeries, YAG capsulotomy and selective laser trabeculoplasty, in a bill introduced in the state Senate on Feb. 7.

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campaign to have problematic new local coverage determination policies for minimally invasive glaucoma surgery withdrawn at the end of 2023.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.