And what will THE END be like?

[Jarhead Daddy]

Recently, a thread entitled “The End Could Be Near” lamented that the North Carolina Board of Dispensing Opticians is in danger of being eliminated:

Today, sadly, we found out that the nc opticians board, has made the list of five boards to be eliminated, under the nc gear act, which in a nutshell says people are being deprived of the right to work in occupational services, so we will eliminate the license. yeh, that's what we need more people who don,t know what they are doing in the business.

NC opticians, you need to start today, contacting your reps and senators, because you know what the alternative is. also join NCOA.

THE BOARD:
It turns out that the poster’s fears can be temporarily allayed. It is true that the NCBDO has an approximately $55,000 / year deficit for the past five years, and that the State Auditor has recommended that they find further ways to cut costs, work with the State Legislature to raise fees, or be consolidated with other under-performing boards.

http://www.ncauditor.net/EPSWeb/Repo...-2014-8145.pdf

However, I was unable to find any bill that called for the termination of the NCBDO. Rather, I found NC Senate Bill 525 which actually does exactly what the NCBDO requested in response to the revelation that it was losing money. The Bill revises some licensure and testing requirements, and it also raises fees by 50% for most scheduled fee items.

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions...PDF/S525v1.pdf

Good for the NCBDO. Looks like, with a little extra lobbying from NC opticians, their regulatory board will continue business as usual.

THE FEAR:
Like most chat board threads, the topic quickly left the concern over the NCBDO’s predicament, and morphed into a discussion about the fear of what opticianry will become if it is deregulated (“the end”). It is THE END that I am interested in. What will it be like? From what I observed in the remainder of the thread, there are two main fears:

1. An altruistic fear – the fear that uncaring corporations, machines, and novices will take over the industry and provide either sub-standard or harmful care to an unwary John Q. Public.
2. A selfish fear – the fear that uncaring corporations, machines, and novices will be allowed to compete with trained opticians, therefore reducing the income of licensed opticians.

THE QUESTION:
Whether or not you are for the deregulation of opticianry in your state, I am interested to see what my fellow opticians and optometrists think the industry will be like ten or twenty years from now. No doubt machines will do more, and humans will do less. No doubt laws will change. No doubt new products will replace old products and old products will be perfected.

My grandfather once sang in a barbershop quartet, “These will be the good ol’ days twenty-five years from now.” Keeping this sentiment in mind, where do you see opticianry going twenty-five years from now? Will it be better or worse for the patient? Will care be better or worse? Will opticians make more or less? Who knows? Maybe we can dig this thread up in 25 years and have a good laugh. Fire away!

[Chris Ryser]

THE QUESTION:
Whether or not you are for the deregulation of opticianry in your state, I am interested to see what my fellow opticians and optometrists think the industry will be like ten or twenty years from now. No doubt machines will do more, and humans will do less. No doubt laws will change. No doubt new products will replace old products and old products will be perfected.

The well educated and professional optician who supplies top quality today and has good or superb reputation will continue his or her operation and continue to make a good income.

The rest has a gloomy future. Run of the mill Opticians have listened too long to the large corporations to sell highly priced lenses and frames they can not even process anymore in their own premises.

The highly pushed AR coatings by just about everybody have widely eliminated the in house finishing, which makes the product more costly and the end result cost's the customer way more, as the multiplying factor remains the same.

The opticians profession that have originally been superb artisans, and that over the past 25-30 years has evolved into sleek sales people, will become a slowly dying species.

So over the next quarter century many will disappear into oblivion like other commercial ventures have done, due to changing times and technologies, as well as the interference of the recent web commerce.

[wmcdonald]

You are correct. I mentioned the Senate bill in the other thread already, and I am comfortable the association and board have FINALLY done some work together to maintain licensure. But the truth is, if Opticianry does not improve......meaning expand its scope to allow us to do more, then the world I knew and sought to improve upon will not exist. There will always be someone called an "optician", but what will that look like? Who knows. My goal is for us to have the vision and drive to control our own destiny, as others have done. Unfortunately that takes organization and cooperation. Maybe it is too late, but hey, I'm an old dude and just can't give up on these people who deserve someone to challenge and push them to raise their sites. You ask a good question regarding the patient. Will they be better off? I don't see how they can be much worse, quite frankly. Most Opticians know so little now about the field that an answer to that question will probably no. SO we have two choices......just let it happen, as you suggest, or improve upon our own futures. I choose the latter, but is sure is lonely our here sometimes. I get a lot of comments from folks who read my comments, and all are positive. One yesterday from someone anonymous.......keep up the good fight! Hey, I am trying, but join me.

[The Optical Giant]

25 years from now we'll all be wearing some goolge glass inspired creation thats connected to the chips in our head constantly monitoring our every bodily function. It will have liquid crystal lenses the constantly adjust RX for perfect vision and holographic projection capability to look any way you like. Or maybe we'll have just gotten the complete robot upgrade.

[harry a saake]

Jarhead, there is no bill calling for the elimination,and I did not state that. there is a recommendation , very poorly studied and written, by one mr. coletti, who made up a list of recommended boards to be eliminated, and the opticians are one of them. although numbers of the senators in Raleigh did not think much of colettis report, its still there stoking the fires.
SB525, which everyone seems to be in agreement with, needs to get out of committee and from what I know I feel it will.
at that point is when things need to change with the board, and certainly number one is new leadership of the board.
Also if NCOA is going to be effective in the future, all the opticians need to join, vote out the present leadership, get new blood into the organization, with term limits of no more then 6 years per person

[drk]

If optical dispensing boards would levy big fines against onliners, it would be a win-win for the state and the citizens.

Just sayin'.

[wmcdonald]

If optical dispensing boards would levy big fines against onliners, it would be a win-win for the state and the citizens.


Just sayin'.

The same is true for Optometry Boards, and both have tried, but they have no control over these online providers. They are not in their jurisdictions. It has been tried several times already. The only folks these boards control are their licensees.

[Paul Smith LDO]

If optical dispensing boards would levy big fines against onliners, it would be a win-win for the state and the citizens.

Just sayin'.

Cats like us are under the jurisdiction of the FDA, them mutts are under the jurisdiction of the FTC. Funny how that works.

[Jarhead Daddy]

If optical dispensing boards would levy big fines against onliners, it would be a win-win for the state and the citizens.

Just sayin'.

One of the challenges for the states is creating laws that are equitable (applicable to all, including the onliners) and enforceable. Globalization has certainly made this harder. Is it possible create a federal law that defines jurisdiction as the point of delivery for online orders? (US Constitution, Article I, Section 8 "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribe.) This could at least put us on an even playing field with our online competitors.

On that same note, in Nevada, businesses owned by opticians must have a license on site in order to dispense, and only licenses and apprentices may dispense at all. But businesses owned by optometrists can hire a burger flipper one day, and have him dispensing the next. Also, the OD does not even need to be on site. Therefore, an OD could open a practice, hire burger flippers (no offence to burger flippers), and show up one day a week to do the books. This is not equitable to opticians in Nevada. In my town, there are four licensed opticians. Two are at my practice (I am one of them). The other two are at Wal-Mart. None of the ODs (that I am aware of) employ a licensed optician, and I don't think any of them employ an ABO-cert optician either.