April 2011: Board Certification

Editor:

I would like to clarify an inaccuracy in Greg Knight’s article in the November/December 2010 Keystoner in his first sentence: “...Pennsylvania joined an overwhelming number of states to support certification by the recently established American Board of Optometry (ABO).”

ABO establishment received a majority of votes in 30 jurisdictions and there were 23 against. An interesting aspect of it is that of the jurisdictions that split their vote (e.g. not a block vote) 3 were a majority Yes, 7 were a majority No. That said, it is a bit misleading to count states/jurisdictions. For instance, you have Ohio, with 118 votes of No, offset by Maine with 2 votes Yes, or AOSA with 3 votes Yes. More revealing is that if California, which voted 191 in favor, had voted in accord with its membership survey, which was 76% against and 24% in favor, instead of as a block, the vote goes Against ABO establishment by a vote of 1032 to 971. The California block vote alone was enough to have the ABO established.The final vote count is listed on the AOA website at http://www.aoa.org/x12522.xml.


David R. McPhillips, O.D., F.A.A.O.
Horsham