JACKSON - Members of the medical community are urging the Mississippi Senate to reject a bill that would allow optometrists to prescribe narcotic drugs and perform surgical procedures on eyes.
Dr. Randy Easterling, spokesman for the Mississippi State Medical Association, said the passage of this bill would create a threat to health care.
"Drug-seeking patients are very clever and convincing in their attempts to obtain drugs. The first place that these desperate people will go are to the innocent prescriber that knows very little about these medications," Easterling said Wednesday during a news conference at the Capitol.
The House-passed bill has been referred to the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, and it's unknown when the committee will consider it.
Sen. Alan Nunnelee, chairman of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, said the bill is complicated. He said he's studying the laws in other states.
"I don't really have a direction on where the committee's going," Nunnelee said Wednesday.
Supporters said the bill would help provide rural residents with access to eye care.
Ophthalmologists oppose the bill, saying optometrists lack the necessary medical background. Optometrists are not medical doctors.
The Mississippi Optometric Association, in a released statement, said optometrists are highly trained medical providers with a minimum of four years postgraduate training at accredited colleges of optometry.
Sen. Alice Harden, D-Jackson, said ophthalmologists shouldn't be opposed to optometrists because both provide needed health care services.
"As long as these people have the adequate training to dispense those drugs, the bottom line is that the citizens get a better quality of care," said Harden, who is supporting the bill.
Easterling said there's no evidence that ophthalmology care is being denied in some communities.
"This has been painted in some venues as ophthalmologist versus optometrists, and it's not," he said.
Under the House bill, optometrists could prescribe Schedule III, IV, and V narcotics. Schedule III narcotics include hydrocodone and Lortab, both addictive street drugs, doctors say.
Forty-nine states allow optometrists to prescribe pain killers and other narcotics. In Mississippi, optometrists are allowed to use only external medicine on their patients.
Dewey Handy, an optometrist in Jackson, said he and his colleagues need the authority to prescribe oral medications.
"The topicals, they only go so far. If they come to me and I'm not able to treat them then I have to send them out to another doctor," Handy said.
Lawmakers said there are about 200 optometrists in the state, and 130 ophthalmologists.
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