Speaker: Teri K. Geist, O.D., AOA Secretary-Treasurer
Teri K. Geist, O.D.: Hi everyone. Gosh, can you believe it's 2024. And it's time to start thinking about, our New Year's resolutions. I always have a few for myself, but I also have a few for AOA. I'm actually really proud of what AOA and our doctors and our affiliates accomplished in 2023. And we made great strides actually in important legislative efforts, in reimbursement and fair coverage, fair coverage issues, in our VA (Department of Veterans Affairs) practice standards, and our fights with scope and the issues with regulatory stuff that just always comes up. Our not-a-doctor bills. And the list goes on with that. The Eye Deserve More campaign with telling our patients' stories and how we can save lives and change patients lives. That led to over half a million doctor locator hits. That is something that if you just told us back in 2020-2021 when we started that campaign what a big deal that would have been I mean that has just been such an amazing program and that we're so proud of at this point. And so in 2024 we're going to continue to just work just as hard on all of those efforts moving forward and we hope to keep that momentum going legislatively, on a public awareness front and all of those issues.
