And the patient will probably be glad to never come back to your office, and tell all of his/her friends about what a money-grubber you are. Was that bad word of mouth worth the $25 and sense of personal fulfillment?Originally Posted by J.P.
This.I figure if I set them free and they never come back, they were not mine to begin with. If they come back, it's because they learned a valuble lesson about on-line ordering.
Jacqui:
It would be nice to get a clear, legal ruling on this.
Good point!
This may need to be decided in each state separately and maybe even heard by several courts, but I think it might be worth it to have it done. A heavily licensed state may be the best place to get it started.
And then what? We reassure our patients that it's perfectly legal for us to charge them money for their PD? Or refuse to release it?
It's also perfectly legal, under most circumstances, to lie to people. And to commit adultery. It's legal to cut in front of someone in line. It's legal to do plenty of things. Reassuring a patient that this is legal is not going to get their business. It's going to tick them off and confirm the line of thinking that probably drove them to online retail in the first place: That opticians are greedy SOBs trying to bilk them out of their hard-earned money with exorbitant markups on significantly less expensive services and upgrades.
We may win a battle, but it will almost certainly open up a new front that will help to cost us the war.
It is highly unlikely that a court will uphold your right to withold information from the public.
Ok so here it goes.
Would a tailor who took all the measurements in order to make a custom suit for someone be obliged to hand over the measurements to his customer
so the customer could go direct and cut the middleman out next time?
Do the measurements belong to the customer?
Where does this end?
Discussion?
Regards,
Golfnorth
A customer not having his custom-tailored-measurements does not prevent him from buying an OTR suit at a retail outlet. This would be more akin to telling a patient the chemical formula for an in-house AR so that another laboratory could replicate it and apply it to his or her lenses.
For better or worse, a suit is not classed as a medical device. But Rx eyewear is (remember my thread :"Is Plano an Rx?").
So the goal stills stands that each state should determine its interpretation Regarding release.
For the reasons mentioned just anove, I also think states would have a hard time justifying witholding info in the public's mind.
Just saying...
B
fj: I don't agree.But probably the best rule is to think like a consumer and act accordingly. A consumer may wander on the internet to order something (eyewear) for fun and call you for a PD, if you don't give it, or try to hide it, of charge $25 for records release, do you think you will ever see that patient again for other eyecare services?
1. We can be all consumer-sensitive, as you suggest, and in a beneficial way it does drive the free market.
2. BUT, health care is not the totally free marketplace. It's somewhere in between. You need a license. You can sue for malpractice. There is regulation.
3. As such, we licensed pro's are entrusted and responsible and held accountable for the health of our communities.
4. Non-regulated vision care is not in the best interests of our communities. Giving a p.d. to let someone flout state dispensing laws is collusion, in my book.
THINK IT OVER!
maybe getting glasses declasified as DMEs is the first step to actually selling eyewear. I am a big proponent of getting patints into multiple pairs to.accomplish all. Its hard to with.
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Mike, you know I respect you. But listen to yourself, there. It is indeed a patient. What are my responsibilities to that patient?And note that I said PATIENT.
Man, all day long I'm doing this:
"Don't wear your contacts too long again. Take this medicine."
"You have a retinal hole. You're going to need to make sure you return to the retinal specialist."
"Your kid has amblyopia. You have to force her to wear those glasses more often."
"No, you cannot have a refill on that Pataday that I wrote in 2010."
Doctors are responsible for their patients. I am responsible. YOU are responsible.
Don't be a wuss and feel like the system is bigger than you are. YOU ARE THE PROFESSIONAL! YOU ARE THE EXPERT! MAN UP!
A valid and well thought out position, drk!
B
I realize there's a kind of "sliding scale" effect.
Brain surgeons don't really need to keep the customer happy.
Cataract surgeons are a lot more "market-y".
Optometrists more so.
Opticians more so, again.
But we're all pro's, and we have to remember what our role in society is. "To protect and serve". We're vision cops!
We view taking a PD as a service and charge accordingly- $25.00 this includes informing the patient of the pros and certainly the cons of online ordering. We also offer to verify and adjust the glasses after they are recieved but on the condition that we are not responsible to replace faulty eye wear. We never give this information over the phone from a previous order and only provide this service to our patients.
Ummm...you missed the last half of the phrase, where I talked about walk-in's not being a patient.
That said, if you take a PD, it is part of the medical record, and you are required to give it to the patient. It's not yours, it's not a secret, it cannot be given in inches or hidden in some complex math formula. You have the responsibility to the patient to give them the choice to choose where to have their eyewear filled. It's the law. And, if you've taken a PD, you are also required to give it to them as well.
Your responsibilities are indeed huge, I get that, but you cannot withhold parts of their medical records for any reason whatsoever.
You make a good point. NYS still holds that dispensing prescription eyewear without a face to face fitting is illegal...however...it has no way of enforcing it, unless someone is reported.
But on another point, charging $25 to essentially allow the patient to do something illegal doesn't show good stewardship in protecting the profession.
Mikey, when I say "you" I don't mean "you" need to man up. Yes, people are entitled to their medical records, by statute.
Yes, fj, charging for records release is not to make money. It's to dissuade them from doing something illegal. It's a penalty. It IS responsible to disincentivize going online, no?
I would not release p.d.s at all, unless I was forced to.
LOL, you mean the other "you", like the other white meat. Gotcha ;-)
Couple of questions though...Illegal WHERE? Not in my state, not in a goodly number of states. And only releasing PD's whed forced to do so? Yikes!! Would you seriously let it go that far?
(btw, just playing devil's advocate here)
Need your pupillary distance for a purchase of glasses on-line?
PD store on corner Market and Timmens Roads will measure your PD for $ 20.00 on the latest equipment.
You funny, Chris.
If the PD's over an yr old, i recheck the PD.
Mike:
I really didn't mean "you".
I think it's a legit legal argument that online direct-to-consumer labs don't fulfill the dispensing requirements of my state. Your state may be unregulated.
Don't forget, no Rx required in British Columbia for glasses or contacts!
What we will do is re-emphasize the standards for intrastate glasses dispensing and fund the optical dispenser's board with big statutory fines per occurence (which will require some lobbying). That ought to help quite a bit.
Are you an Ohio-registered online spectacle peddler? Have you served an Ohioan? Have you followed our state's dispensing laws? Oh, no? Pay up. $1,000 please.
No, yes, probably not. Mea Culpa. However, in my defense, they have been all Plano's. I checked. When I deal with a customer in a licensing state, I try *real hard* to find a dispenser to work with in that state.
Mike:
"Plano", aka 0.00D *is* an Rx. My GPS says It lies between +0.25D and -0.25D.
It's just not prescribed, but it should be (and will be when EHR become the norm, very soon.)
B
Geeze, Barry, let's not start THAT again!!! ;-)
I look at it this way: In Minnesota (my home state), planos are taxed like sunglasses, in fact, any spectacle without a prescription is taxed. Therefore, essentially, it's a non-prescription lens. But, that's just an aside, I don't want to distract from this thread...
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