Bills Defining Surgery Introduced In Virginia Legislature

 Three bills, two in the House of Delegates and one in the Senate, were introduced for consideration by the Virginia legislature in its current session. All three of the bills were introduced at the request of the Virginia Medical Society and appear to be directed at optometry to block efforts to further expand our scope of practice and were also perhaps in retaliation for the Kentucky optometric surgical bill.

 Each bill defined “surgery” and who may perform it. Surgery is defined by the bills as “structural alteration of the human body by incision, destruction, or excision of tissue for the purpose of diagnostic or therapeutic treatment of conditions or disease processes by any instrument causing localized alteration or transposition of live human tissue.”

  The original bills limited those who may perform surgery to doctors of medicine, osteopathy and podiatry as well as dentists and nurse practitioners. Those not in the expressly included groups of practitioners, including optometrists, would be subject to criminal penalties if found guilty of performing surgery as it was defined in the bills.

Through utilization of its grassroots legislative network, the Virginia Optometric Association (VOA) inundated the offices of the Senate and House committee members considering the bills with hundreds of calls and emails. It had also mobilized over 300 Virginia ODs who were prepared to go to the legislature the week of January 23 to personally speak with the committee members.

 However, with the help of several key legislators, the VOA executive director and his staff were able to kill one bill, since it was a duplicate submission, and have the other two bills amended to protect the scope of practice of Virginia ODs.

This is a warning to other state associations that they may expect similar bills to be introduced. Similar legislation was introduced in Pennsylvania last year and the ODs in that state were just barely able to kill the bill there.