Actually, the LAW doesn't have anything to say about faxing the prescription to you. In Ontario... it literally says; professional misconduct is...Originally Posted by renee1111
Frankly I would be providing written Rx's to all patients just to avoid this kind of efficiency sucking fax requests...14. Failing to make available to a patient who requests one a written, signed and dated prescription for a subnormal vision device, contact lenses or
eyeglasses.
I'm not sure where I mentioned "Doctor" in my blog. In fact I know I did not mention that anywhere in my blog. I really don't care if you call me doctor, just don't call me late for dinner. The case was a real case, one of many I have seen from autorefractors that were incorrectly managed and diagnosed. It does not matter that the person was 13. The same outcome would happen if the person was 23. If you are going to examine eyes, you should know that. But you are correct in saying that optometrists only do this for the money, and opticians do this for humanity. Why else would opticians pay $40,00 for an autorefractor, and do the work for free. Even better they make one pair of glasses and give you two more for free!! Oh, the humanity of it!! But competition being what it is, I'm giving free beer with each pair of glasses I sell to my customers. Business has been great!!
I have, for 25 years, always given out an Rx after an exam. I encourage people to shop around, but compare apples to apples. They always come back because: 1) free beer, 2) I do great work, 3) I'm always less expensive than any retail store for the same item. It has never made any business sense to try to keep people by not giving out an Rx. Like woman, tell 'em your not interested, and they really want even more.
FREE BEER !! WOW !!!!!
When do you have an opening?? I'll be there, early. :bbg::bbg::bbg:
Well,you can think whatever you want. I dont care if any of my patients are reading this.
You seem to be the only optician posting about how hard the evil optometrists are making it for you to obtain scripts.
Have you done anything to make them annoyed at you,so they go out of their way to torpedo you?
You seem to get very emotional in your posts.Perhaps your tone when you contact the ODs office is part of the problem.
If you are getting so worked up about the realities of the business,you might want to consider a less frustrating career.
Last edited by kws6000; 05-01-2008 at 08:02 PM.
Come on, you know refraction is easy. It's all numbers for crying out loud. If you asked the patient to use words to describe the two images, then it might get tricky. I've performed over 5000 refractions myself. My results were then used to either prescribe lenses or as the basis for lasik and PRK treatments. Don't get your backs up, OD's. Just admit that getting your license was much harder than the work you perform.
Getting "a refraction" is easy.Getting an accurate and usable result is harder and where the skill enters into the picture,especially with poor responders.
Driving a manual transmission car is easy-driving a manual transmission car skillfully isnt so easy.
Your 5000 refractions would be about the equivalent of 5-6 mos for me-hardly enough for you to be an expert.Ive been doing this for 23 years and have a pretty good track record,about 2 redoes/year.
If it was so easy to master,then why are there so many redoes? There seems to be a disconnect between your comments and reality.
You know personally for me I have been contemplateing it more and more lately. I am not saying that OD's are the bane of our industry but as an optician, often times:
It's getting to be too much, everyone is looking to find a solution to our problems. To me my lively hood depends on a script written and controlled by another which I don't mind and could really care less about, I don't find refraction as being interesting, to me it's the physics involved that fascinates me you throw physiology in the mix and you lose my interest, but if I can't get a script and the major reason is that the person writing the script benefits from me not recieveing the script then I have to look at this objectively as a problem and with this as a problem I start to look for solutions. In the US some decades back a law was passed to make sure that patients were given their scripts after an exam. I think the issue has beoem very polarized from years of abuse, I advocate refraction for opticians because I would like to see my profession thrive and I don't see that happening in the current symbiotic system that we operate in.
- The doctor won't release the script (OD and OMD)
- The scripts that do get released are riddled with errors (some offices in our area we just refuse to fill now due to the high number of clerical errors)
- Insurance companies won't allow opticians as providers (don't really know if that falls in the bad category)
- Eyewear is treated as a retail item
- Internet retailers not only sell their wares online but then inform their patients that their opticiasn owe the measurements (counts as a minus for OD's and OMD's too)
- Licensing in most the US states is a pipe dream and unenforced in the states do have them
- None of the O's respect the other O's in the industry
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From the posts that I have read,I cant imagine why anyone would want to go into optical ,especially in the us.In canada,online eyeglass places havent caught on yet,but its only a matter of time.
The whole industry has been *******ized by corporate optical with the result that the public looks at eyewear/cls as being commodities like a pair of socks.
Im hoping to retire before it really gets ugly.
No wonder Chip is cranky!
Good luck on that, and can you blame him? Yeah ******** along with a few @#$%^&**'s just about sums it up.
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Great post!! This about sums it up and I couldn't have said it better (without getting "emotional", lol!)
[quote=kws6000;240916]If you would have read my last posts, you would know that my family owned and operated a wholesale lab, for 37 years...producing 150 jobs a day. (with over a million dollars worth of state of the art equipment) We only sent out quality work and the best pricing...which still wasn't enough for our local OPtoms. Essilor tryed to buy my lab, and we refused, which is when they (Essilor) went to all our accounts and offered them a 60% disc. (way, way below our cost, by the way) Our accounts basically switched labs overnight , leaving us with their rush jobs (about 10 jobs a day) We tryed our best to survive on the few jobs left...but just couldn't. So we called it quits with wholesale and opened the largest, most beautiful retail store you've ever seen...and offer pricing that's out of this world! Now the locals are pi**ed, but they are too dumb to realize that they forced us into it. So when I call for scripts now, I'm always nice as pie, mostly because I know all the dispensers very, very well. The staff knows what we went through, and we're still friends. The problem starts when they have to ask the OD to release the script. This is why I am "emotional " when it comes to this business. But I've really never been happier, running my store.Well,you can think whatever you want. I dont care if any of my patients are reading this.
You seem to be the only optician posting about how hard the evil optometrists are making it for you to obtain scripts.
Have you done anything to make them annoyed at you,so they go out of their way to torpedo you?
You seem to get very emotional in your posts.Perhaps your tone when you contact the ODs office is part of the problem.
If you are getting so worked up about the realities of the business,you might want to consider a less frustrating career.
Ok.
These posts are depressing....with internet eyeglass and contact lens sales, I really wonder what the future holds for opticianry?? ODs can still get by doing exams and treating eye conditions, but even for us, the belt will have to tighten....
I wonder in 20 years the whole of humanity will be employed by either Walmart or Costco..? Seems to be the direction of things...more so in the USA, but it's starting in Canada.
Hope I can retire soon! lol
Please don't take it the wrong way. I respect you and what you do. I'm not saying refraction is unskilled labour, I'm just saying that if you consider the mental and physical effort it takes to refract and the corresponding financial reward, it's a pretty darn good ratio. No?
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Last edited by Refractingoptician.com; 05-07-2008 at 09:53 PM.
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Last edited by Refractingoptician.com; 05-07-2008 at 09:53 PM.
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Last edited by Refractingoptician.com; 05-07-2008 at 09:53 PM.
The guidelines are not intended to enable independent sight-testers, as the ministry already put the COO in it's place on that matter, rather their intended purpose is to establish a frame-work for delegation of refraction in Ontario.
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Last edited by Refractingoptician.com; 05-07-2008 at 09:54 PM.
I'd like to make a comment about this. It's great to hear that you all have made it part of your routine to make sure all of your patients have rx in hand when they leave your office. But please.. PLEASE don't think that all, or even a lot of offices are like this. I've experianced it from both sides of the coin. Customers coming in to see me when I worked retail, saying that they either had to ask for their rx, or was never given to them. Sure some of them could be full of it, not wanting to admit they've lost it, but I've also worked in two seperate OD offices, on different sides of the country. Neither office gave out the Rx unless it was specificly asked for. I'm sorry, but I'm more inclined to believe that more offices work like this than how your offices do.
I think we are all getting frustrated with the optical business and that is showing up with the sniping and pissing matches in some of these threads.These posts are depressing....with internet eyeglass and contact lens sales, I really wonder what the future holds for opticianry?? ODs can still get by doing exams and treating eye conditions, but even for us, the belt will have to tighten....
I wonder in 20 years the whole of humanity will be employed by either Walmart or Costco..? Seems to be the direction of things...more so in the USA, but it's starting in Canada.
Hope I can retire soon! lol
I dont think optometry is going to get off easy with the *******...tion of the industry.
If I were young and looking at career choices,the optical industry,including optometry would be off the list.
Im frustrated with the increased demands,lack of compliance with recommendations,and nickel and dimeing from patients .
I sympathize with the opticians posting on this board,especially in the us ,who have more of a problem with internet sales or discounters (5 pairs for $29) or who have to work for some of the big outfits.
You know the funny thing is that the doctors that are beign unscrupulous won't oftne visit this site, why would they you can make a fortune in any industry by being underhanded with business practices, just the fact that your here seems to indicate you are lookign for ways to better your profession or office or to learn more and I can't continue to fault your whole profession for the few bad apples. I just wish again there was a way of differentiateing the good optometrists from the bad optometrists in practice, the same goes for opticianry. I know the AOA is looking to implement a Board Certification thing which sounds liek a crock of poo to me.
So the way I see it is if the general public respected the eye exam more, then the doctors would be reimbursed more for the time and effort spent with each patient then the doctors wouldn't have such a problem with sellign glasses or protectign their turf like rabid dogs, the real issue is the fact that their are too many outside hands in the cookie jar, insurance, retailers, now internet merchants.
Here is my suggestion or solution:
Put all our differences aside and work on ways to stop the ********tion.
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Question...
If opticians had the right to prescribe glasses or perform sight testing, would they have to hand the patient a written copy of the Rx so they could shop around? Not doing so would be dishonest? No?
Circular reasoning, isn't it?... Counter productive, IMO. Not everyone who sells what they prescribe is dishonest. Is the dentist who detects and fills your cavity dishonest? Is the OMD who detects and removes your cataract dishonest? What about the mechanic who says you need a new timing belt and does it for you? Should he be required by law to say to you, "Here's a list of what's wrong with your car. Here's a list of the parts you need to fix it. Now go take this information somewhere else."
It would be a moot point because if all eyeglass sellers were refracting, there would be no need to visit 2 of them. You could be refracted by everyone. It wouldn't matter.
I agree. It's only the ones who create a double standard about false conflicts of interest who are dishonest.Your example is flawed because a) he is not a doctor, and b) you don't have to pay a mechanic to tell you your transmission is shot.
Not all opticians would refract..just like not all ODs or MDs sell glasses. The consumer would still expect the right to shop around, and the FTC rules on handing out an Rx would not go away. In fact the likelihood is they would have to be expanded to include the prescribing optician.
Whether he has a college degree or not, the mechanic is the doctor of your car. You have to depend on his honesty, and if in your past experience he is dishonest, you simply don't go back. Sometimes they do charge to figure out what is wrong with your car, and frankly I don't blame them. I know it varies from state to state, but how about when the mechanic charges you $35 (as in NY) to do a safety inspection? He tells you what is wrong and how much it will cost. He is absolutely expecting you to get your car fixed at his shop. Do you expect him to give you all the details of the cars condition, a list of the parts needed, where to get them, and guarantee that if the repairs are made somewhere else, that the car will pass inspection after? It's very similar to medical/optical situations. Business is business. Doctors are not above the rest of us, and mechanics are not below us.
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