Sarah Wellik: Patient safety remains top of mind after legislative battles
Florida lawmakers chose to protect patients and put their safety first.
This year’s Legislative Session was full of wins and losses for many, but one important group remained at the forefront for Florida’s leaders: patients.
Against the backdrop of a historical economic recovery from a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis that closed our nation, Florida lawmakers chose to protect patients and put their safety first by ensuring that dangerous optometric surgery legislation did not pass.
Senate Bill 876, would have allowed optometrists who are neither medical doctors nor trained surgeons to perform dangerous and invasive surgeries without ever going to medical school or surgical residency. Furthermore, it would have provided the Florida Board of Optometry a regulatory board lacking any medical doctors or surgeons complete autonomous authority to determine any and all surgeries optometrists could perf
Need another reason to support infrastructure plan? Look at Piney Point | Letters to the editor sun-sentinel.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sun-sentinel.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A bill being discussed in the Florida Legislature would allow optometrists to carry out eye surgeries, just like ophthalmologists. A professor of clinical ophthalmology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute writes that this is a very bad idea.
Eyeball wars heat up again in Florida Senate - Orlando Business Journal bizjournals.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bizjournals.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
/
Bill sponsor Sen. Manny Diaz Jr. promised he would make changes as it maneuvers through the legislative session.
Amid heavy opposition from physicians, the Senate Health Policy Committee approved a bill that would authorize optometrists to perform some laser surgeries and prescribe opioids. Jump-starting an annual tug-of-war over who can treat patients, a Senate panel has approved a bill that would authorize optometrists to perform some laser surgeries and prescribe opioids for patients.
The vote, however, came amid heavy opposition from physicians and suggestions from some Republican lawmakers that they were only voting for the bill out of deference to bill sponsor Manny Diaz Jr., a Hialeah Republican who is chairman of the Senate Health Policy Committee.