Association of Technical Opticians

ROATx of the Registered Opticians Association of Texas is an organization that is always ready to advance, they have changed with the times and stand now as a model for many other optical state organizations. Many states hope to duplicate their sucess by emulateing their strategies. I had the pleasure of meeting Sam Johnson the master opticians who is the brains behind the operation a few years back. His speach was calm and collected, his height was average, it threw me off; my expectation was a large grizzly man that chewed nails and spit fire. Sam has managed to turn lemon into lemonade for years now, I oncce had a very respected and admired mentor of mine call him a pit bull, once he gets his mind around something he won’t rest until he reaches success. Well Sam has his eye’s on licensure in Texas and guess what it can’t be but so far off if Sam has sunk his jaws into it. Check out their new site and become involved in their new efforts.:

http://opticians-licensure.roatx.org/

Education in any form is a welcome sight here and to our profession. John of www.opticianworks.com has put together a comprehensive educational site. Johns goals for the site:

“I have two long term goals for the site. First over the next few years I want to see an end to the textbook Ophthalmic Dispensing. It is antiquated, expensive, awkward, and worst of all it makes a relatively simple subject seem far more complex than it needs to be. Second I want to see opticianworks as a consistent top ten on a Google search of the word optician.”

With such a great site let’s help him reach that goal, visit and bookmark the site today.

In the past I have heard many rumors mostly in online forums, things like Essilor and Luxottica teaming up. Crazy I know, but lately our industry has seen a twisted and disturbing trend of corporations taking advantage of the independent practitioners. Some of the latest headlines VSP losing their status as a non-profit and then purchaseing Marchon to then further squeezing the same profession their non-profit status was supposed to support. 1800contacts partnering up with Walmart to provide exams, because the law doesn’t allow them to sell contacts to expired prescritpions they need and avenue to get them in valid prescriptions. To the latest Essilor and Frames Direct partnering to provide eyeglasses online.

This trend has been predicted far before I could ever concieve of it, but here we are. ECP’s are at a precipice where a choice needs to be made. Some call to boycott Essilor, but they didn’t start this disturbing trend they just see an oportunity to exploit it. The many ethically bankrupt companies that have traded in sustainable growth for fast cash are growing and the mentality to have ECP’s join them is alarming. I won’t atempt to pursuade anyone into boycotting essilors products, but I personally won’t be using their products or services.

The real problem that needs to be addressed is our professions fractures, until optician, OD and OMD learn to work together large corporations will exploit this weakness. Eyeglasses need to be fitted properly and dispensed by qualified professionals, this cannot be accomplished with online eyewear so our patients are beign swindled and now our vendors want in on it.

With the summer upon us, it is very important that we let our patients know the importance of proper UV protection. This means we need the resources to properly educate them. The EPA has create a sunwise program that allows us to monitor the UV index in our geographic locations by way of a zip code widget. ATO created a simple 7′ x 7′ placard that can be attached to a front window or a front door to allow foot traffic to see the UV index for the day at a glance along with a short description fo the proper precautions to take. The 7′ x 7′ placards are designed to mimic the EPAs UV poster which is also attached alogn with a few other relevent materials. Use these resources to inform patients about proper sunwear.

UV Guide (pdf)
UV Poster (pdf)
UV Handout (pdf)

UV Index Lookup Tool
Zipcode

Designed as a great resource for local grocery stores to display, this poster is optimized for printing at 24′ x 36′ at a resolution of 150 dpi. To download click on the thumbnail image below to take you to the larger version of the document.