A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT PHILIP ONG, O.D.
This past Friday and Saturday, Feb 8th and 9th, COA House of Delegates met in Sacramento to hear state committee reports, Proposed Bylaws Amendments, Proposed Policy Resolutions, and Proposed Budgets for 2008 thru 2010 for COA. The House of Delegates deliberated and eventually voted on these which will give direction to our organization, COA, for 2008 and into 2009 until the next HOD convenes. New members to the COA Board of Trustees were elected. A big THANK YOU to Santa Clara's delegates and alternates for their sacrifice of personal time and being away from their practices: Sandra Bozich, Jeff Calmere, Ray Chin, Brent Chinn, Keith Chow, Linda Hur, Chris Kavanagh, Saul Levine, Rodney Lum, Karin Meng, Dennis Olson, Philip Ong, Sam Pesner, Deborah Rheam, Ken Schwaderer, and Ron Seger. We THANK Bob Theaker for his stewardship this past year as President of COA. We now welcome and CONGRATULATE David Redman as this year's President of COA.
The HOD voted to continue to keep a reserve fund minimum of 1.2 million, keep member- ship mandatory for all members of COA in the Public Vision League which is our watchdog committee monitoring legal cases that have significant implications on how optometry may be practiced in CA. We also voted to support local society training for infant and chil- dren exams, voted in support of the Health Care Delivery Services Committee continue its efforts to assist members with insurance access and for the Legislation and Regulation Committee to carefully evaluate sponsorship of legislation regarding "any willing provider". We also voted to not act on elimination of branch office license restrictions, instead re- ferred back to the COA Board of Trustees for referral to the Legislation and Regulation Committee for investigation and report. We support AOA efforts to amend Medicaid law to be consistent with MediCare law which defines optometrists as "physicians" and permits them to participate in the MediCare program up to their full scope of State practice. We voted in support to extend the Legislative Fund Assessment of $14.00/mo which is solely for the future scope of practice enhancement and protection. We discussed a lot, before finally voting in support that COA MAY increase full member dues rates UP TO a MAXIMUM of $60.00 per year for 2009-2011 solely to balance the general operating budget.
COA has operated with a deficit in its Budget this past year and anticipates the cash flow problem will also carry into the next few years. Dues increase to offset this deficit will be- gin 2009. The ultimate solution is to have more optometrists join COA, more attendees for CE at OptoWest in March and at Monterey Symposium in November. Please first con- sider attending one these venues for your CE requirements this year.
American Optometric Association is exploring postgraduate "Board Certification" as a measure of advanced clini- cal competence for optometrists and the certification process would serve as "proof of quality care" for the gen- eral public and for managed care organizations.
For those offices who use a fictitious name for their license, the fictitious name MUST include either "optometry" or "optometric" in the name as per the State Board of Optometry. All branch offices must be registered, and the owner(s) optometrist(s) must be there at least 50% of the time. More info is available on the website @ www.optometry.ca.gov.
Art Low, Tommy Lim, and all the doctors who volunteered and attended the legislative meetings with them are forging the groundwork with the legislators for our expansion of SCOPE. More meetings have been arranged, please contact Art and Tommy for the times and places. You are all doing a fantastic effort as Keypeople. April 15th will be COA's Keyperson Day in Sacramento. The legislators whom we meet with now and have their ques- tions answered about what optometrists want in the upcoming bill will be more open to us later when we ask for their support. Updates on SCOPE expansion, Keyperson day, PACs' are available on COA's website www.coavision.org , please visit it.
Please consider supporting Scott Kamena, OD who is running for CA State Assembly this June 2008. It would be good to have another optometrist in the legislature who is "on our side".
This Sunday, Feb 10th was UCBSO's 13th Partnership Conference. Various modes of optometric practice were presented by their respective doctors to the student doctors. EyeExam of California, Costco, Wal-Mart, Kaiser Per- manente, Veteran's Administration, Private Practice, and VSP. They all presented their viewpoints and why they considered it worthwhile to be in that type of practice. The doctor in Wal-Mart and the doctor in Kaiser, each also practiced a half day in private practice. Afterwards, Larry Thal (a past COA President) and I had the opportunity to be additional proponents for private practice.
Much time was devoted to promoting and in service to our profession these past weeks. Please take the opport- nity to show your appreciation to our colleagues who have served in this 2008 House of Delegates and to our col- leagues serving in the Keyperson legislative meetings. I am truly grateful! THANK YOU!
Philip Ong
More in the PDF Version >>