Focus on recovery, renewal and the future at Optometry’s Meeting® 2021

The past year has been like no other for optometry, AOA’s leadership said Thursday at Optometry’s Meeting^®, yet the association, affiliates and members rose to the occasion, and even thrived in some ways, in difficult conditions.

In his address to members in Denver, AOA Executive Director Jon Hymes noted, after a much-awaited return to the profession’s premier meeting, the goal was to focus on recovery, renewal and the future. Yet, the Covid-19 crisis revealed two truths.

“No. 1: Doctors of optometry have made an important difference for our country through this year of historic crises,” Hymes said. “The second: Our organizations­—the affiliates and the AOA—have made an important difference for our doctors. Just as all of you adapted and overcame to deliver the safest, highest-quality care, the affiliates and the AOA adapted and overcame to live up to our mission: to advocate for the profession and to serve doctors of optometry in meeting the health and vision care needs of the public.

“The AOA and the affiliates helped optometry to answer America’s urgent call for help,” he added. “As a result, doctors of optometry and your essential role in the delivery of primary health care is—from coast to coast—a settled matter of enacted law, finalized regulation, emergency declarations, public health proclamations and community-by-community clinical reality. It is health-care fact, something I could not have said any of the 15 previous times I’ve been privileged to report to this House (of Delegates). In March of 2020, in the midst of the most far-reaching and deadly public health crisis in a century, doctors of optometry met the moment with knowledge, skills, compassion and courage that have defined the now accelerating pace of its advancement.”

AOA President William T. Reynolds, O.D., added: “Because of the hard work of a lot of people, AOA is coming out of the pandemic stronger than when we entered it.”

AOA pulls together

How did they do it? 

• By delivering safe, urgent and emergent care to patients amid the crisis, keeping them out of hospital emergency departments coping with coronavirus caseloads.“In so many ways, that’s the story of optometry and the pandemic,” Hymes said. “Lives saved. Patients prioritized. Health protected. Additional community spread prevented. By doctors who fulfilled their oath and faithfully served their communities, making a difference for our country. Doctor after doctor has shared with me that their practices and their bonds with patients have grown stronger because of how they responded to the crisis. They share, too, that optometry has become better recognized and even more respected.”
  
  
• By adopting a Board of Trustees plan that put members’ needs front and center. An immediate two-month dues waiver, membership-wide, a dues and assessment freeze, an organization-wide reprioritization to focus on crisis relief, creation of a $500,000 fund to assist distressed affiliates; and establishment of an AOA-led, industry-supported Recovery Fund under Optometry Cares^®—The AOA Foundation. “It wasn’t just throwing a sum of money—in this case, a $5.5 million commitment—at a problem, it was a blood, sweat and tears commitment to help doctors in immediately impactful ways and to see things through,” Hymes said.

• By maintaining a dual focus to serve as the central information resource for our doctors, students and paraoptometrics to turn to any time of day or night and to take optometry’s story to policymakers, payers, media and public. There were 11 AOA webinars between March 17, 2020, and February 22, 2021, viewed live and downloaded more than 26,000 times. Information presented on the webinars helped doctors claim $2.1 billion in federal crisis relief. Hymes said: “These sessions also brought the profession together in big numbers when everyone felt the most isolated. In gathering and delivering this information, we knew that every dollar in Federal physician grant and forgivable loan aid that could be secured, would help save practices and jobs and allow students dependent on debt relief to continue their education.”

• By its unabating advocacy efforts. “We worked to ensure doctors of optometry were able to obtain PPP, EIDL and HHS money,” Dr. Reynolds said. “This focus helped us seize legislative opportunities that arose, in part because of the pandemic,” he added. “We were able to get HHS to declare us as an ‘essential health care provider.’ We received the right to give vaccinations, the VA repealed the ban on doctors of optometry doing laser procedures and we were able to get Anthem to discontinue the practice of automatically down-coding optometric services. We have our best shot in decades of being re-included in the National Health Service Corps loan forgiveness program. Our DOC Access and robocall legislation has increased legislative support and an excellent chance of moving forward, and the Enhanced Medicare Bill has vision benefits embedded in the medical plan where they belong. Our members and volunteers have stepped up, too.”

Throughout the crisis, AOA leaders, doctors, staffs and partners showed their mettle, including Barbara L. Horn, O.D., and Dr. Reynolds, O.D., who served as AOA president during this time.

“... their love for the profession, their respect for colleagues, their great wisdom and experience, desire to serve and unparalleled command of optometry and its essential and expanding role in health care guided them in all that they did through historically uncertain times,” Hymes said. “Their leadership qualities shined through in every early morning, late-night phone call and in the countless crisis response meetings they led.”

‘Optometry in the vanguard’

Highly decorated NASA astronaut and retired U.S. Navy flight surgeon Capt. Jerry Linenger, M.D., Ph.D., delivered the keynote address during the Optometry’s Meeting opening event, supported by Johnson & Johnson Vision, on Thursday. The veteran of multiple shuttle missions, including a fateful, five-month stint on the Russian space station Mir, Dr. Linenger spoke about overcoming isolation and persevering in the face of incredible challenges.

Beyond talking about the separation of being off-planet, Dr. Linenger described the relative loneliness serving aboard Mir as the only American astronaut alongside his two Russian cosmonaut colleagues—a language barrier often frustrating their work. However, when master alarms began blaring one day and Dr. Linenger saw the faintest whisps of smoke, he had no trouble understanding his colleagues: “Fire!”

For 15 minutes, the Mir crew battled a blaze that threatened to breach the space station’s hull. It would come to be described as the most severe fire aboard an orbiting spacecraft to date. With the fire extinguished, Dr. Linenger and the crew stayed awake for 48 hours to monitor their vital signs before allowing themselves to sleep.

“One thing I’ve learned is that you’ve got to give it all you got, give it all your fight, but when that fire’s out, you need to leave it behind and get ready for the next challenge,” he told attendees. “COVID-19 was a challenge that you all can relate with—but it’s time we learn from it and press on to get ready for the next challenge, whatever it may be.”

In describing his homecoming, Dr. Linenger recounted the mental—and physical—toll of prolonged spaceflight.

Noting the shift in cerebral fluids from protracted weightlessness, astronaut’s globes may experience a flattening, which is why NASA’s doctors send various diopter-strength glasses on the spaceflight to counteract vision troubles. Dr. Linenger, in displaying a photograph of himself in front of his own recent retinal image at Johnson Space Center, couldn’t be more appreciative of the work that doctors of optometry provide.

“Optometry is truly in the vanguard of astronaut health,” Dr. Linenger said. “My hat’s off to you all. Astronauts have great respect for your profession and what you all do protecting our health long-term.”

In other events from Optometry’s Meeting, AOA awardees were honored and, for the first time, AOA volunteers gathered for the AOA Leaders Summit for a second time in 2021. The summit was initially held virtually in January.

Stay in the know by following Optometry’s Meeting social accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and watch for daily news updates from the profession’s premier meeting, posted at aoa.org/news. Get a feel for the buzz by following the official hashtag, #OM2021.