STAND. COM. REP. NO. 18

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2001

RE: H.B. No. 223

 

 

Honorable Calvin K.Y. Say

Speaker, House of Representatives

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health, to which was referred H.B. No. 223 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO OPTOMETRY,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this bill is to:

(1) Allow optometrists in the State of Hawaii to prescribe all pharmaceutical agents allowed by the Board of Optometry and not just those pharmaceutical agents that are topically applied; and

(2) Repeals the Joint Formulary Advisory Committee created by the Legislature in 1996 and activated in 1999.

Your Committee recognizes that optometry is a rapidly expanding primary health care profession and that optometrists provide a valuable service to their patients. Optometrists must pass a long and arduous process consisting of over 200 hours of coursework, examinations, and preceptorship under the auspices of an ophthalmologist.

Furthermore, your Committee realizes that by allowing all pharmaceutical agents to be prescribed by optometrists and by allowing the professionally competent and expert Board of Optometry to develop, control, and maintain an evolving therapeutic pharmaceutical agents (TPA) formulary, patient care will be enhanced.

Your Committee also recognizes that Hawaii has the most restrictive TPA law in the United States and is the only state in which a joint formulary advisory committee dictates matters to the State's Board of Optometry.

Testimony in support of this measure was received from the Board of Examiners in Optometry, Hawaii Optometric Association, Eye Care Associates of Hawaii, Hawaii Nurses Association, a large number of optometrists, and private citizens. Testimony indicated that the current joint advisory formulary committee is polarized and maintains a bureaucratic process that delays treatment to patients and may be a hindrance to effective and timely patient care. Testimony also indicated that the Board of Examiners in Optometry are competent to serve as the regulatory agency evolving, controlling, and maintaining a drug formulary for optometrists and that by allowing the prescription of all pharmaceutical agents, thus expanding the range of TPAs approved for use by optometrists, cost effective, safe, and comprehensive eye care could be provided to the people of Hawaii.

The Hawaii Medical Association, Hawaii Ophthalmological Society, Hawaii Psychiatric Medical Association, and various physicians and ophthalmologists presented testimony in opposition to this measure.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 223 and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Consumer Protection and Commerce.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Health,

____________________________

DENNIS A. ARAKAKI, Chair