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Let's protect veterans' eye care – Daily Montanan [1]

['More From Author', 'December', 'Darrell Ehrlick']

Date: 2022-12-21  

The Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., is taking steps that could allow optometrists – who are not medical doctors or trained surgeons –to perform eye surgery on our nation’s veterans.

This would put their health, safety, and vision at risk.

Optometrists, while important members of the eye care community, are not medical doctors or trained surgeons. While they provide valuable primary vision care services, they lack the medical education, surgical training, and clinical experience required to perform surgery.

As a proud member of a family with several veterans who served our country, it is important to me that veterans receive the highest and safest levels of surgical care from the VA. My family considers every military veteran to be part of our extended family. And so do I.

We care deeply about those who served and believe wholeheartedly that veterans have not only earned but deserve the highest standards of health care available. Lowering the standards required to operate on the eyes of our veterans is simply unacceptable.

Current VA policy protects veterans with the requirement that only ophthalmologists— medical doctors who are trained eye surgeons—may perform eye surgery within the Veterans Health Administration system. This critical safeguard ensures our veterans that the ones operating on their eyes have the necessary education, training and experience, which includes medical school and surgical residency in ophthalmology. We need to keep it that way.

Sen. Jon Tester has been a leading voice for veterans and a dedicated advocate for expanding high-quality healthcare across the state of Montana. He has an important opportunity to do so once more on this important issue. Montanans statewide should be encouraged to call upon him and our full congressional delegation to urge the VA to maintain its existing standard of surgical eye care and not allow optometrists to perform eye surgery on veterans.

Our nation’s heroes made sacrifices to serve our country. The very least we can do is ensure they receive the highest quality surgical care through the VA.

Please protect our veterans’ eye care.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/12/21/lets-protect-veterans-eye-care/

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