We advocate:

• for all children preK-12 be screened annually. (We have a group of Augusta Medical and Emory Ophthalmology students conducting research as to whether and how each school district addresses vision screening.)
• for a change in the law for our tele-optometry program to allow us to provide services in churches, community centers, etc., because of space issues in some rural licensed clinics.
• for funding to expand our optometry staff to serve more school children, ultimately statewide.

The Current Tele-optometry Law & Our Requested Changes To Reach and Serve More Georgians

O.C.G.A. 31-12-12(b)(1}(C) provides that “[n]o person in this state shall write a prescription for contact lenses or spectacles unless an eye examination is performed. The prescription shall take into consideration any medical findings and any refractive error discovered during the eye examination.” O.C.G.A. 31-12-12(a)(3) defines an eye examination as “an inperson assessment, which includes telemedicine at a physician’s office or optometrist’s office or in a hospital setting or hospital health system setting in accordance with the applicable standard of care, of the ocular health and visual status of an individual… in order to establish a medical diagnosis or for the establishment of refractive error.”

The Georgia Board of Optometry is permitted to promulgate rules and regulations to implement relevant Georgia statutes. As stated above, telehealth or telemedicine in eye examinations are permitted in Georgia if the telemedicine assessment occurs at a physician’s office, optometrist’s office, hospital, or hospital health system setting. The Georgia Board of Optometry is not able to change that restriction.

That statutory limitation eliminated the possibility of offering telehealth ocular services utilizing a mobile van, which Georgia Lions Lighthouse Foundation (“GLLF”) was initially interested in pursuing.

We request a change in the law to allow us to have our tele-optometry services in areas other than licensed clinics, in areas where the clinics are not large enough to house our services (it currently requires three rooms). In those occasions, with a change in the law, we could hold the tele-optometry clinics in churches, community centers, schools, etc. to serve the community which otherwise would not have access to vision care. We do provide the services with verbal and visual synchronous communications during such parts of the examination necessary to ensure quality tele-ocular (tele-optometry) care, making the examination equivalent to an examination in person by a provider.