Dr. Helen Kao Helps Change Law to Allow Optometrists to Provide Home-Based Care

A few years ago, Helen Kao, MD wrote an article about how the California Board of Optometry did not allow optometrists to have a home-based practice. At that time the State Optometry Board would shut down optometry practices doing home visits, threatening legal action and threatening to take away an optometrist's license for this "violation." Dr. Kao remembers how she could not find a single paper, national or even local, which was interested in publishing about this topic when she shopped versions of this piece around a few years ago).  Here is a link to her article in KevinMD. 

Well, GREAT NEWS! Mark Morodomi, the incoming President of the State Board of Optometry, had seen Dr. Kao's article and made a commitment to change Board rules and push the matter through California's legislature. 

AB 458 was passed this summer and signed into law by Governor Brown last week. Optometrists can now choose to provide home-based care as their practice (it does not need to be solely in the scope of an optometry school curriculum).

This is a great win for our patients and home-based clinical programs!