OPAG Agenda: July 2, 2014 Mission: Represent and advocate for the professional discipline of optometry and its commissioned officers, civil servants, contract and tribal optometrists serving within the Public Health Service and affiliated services. OPAG Membership a. Voting Members Terms Expire Nov. 2014 a. Darcy Jones (TH) b. Sarah Stienbarger (CC) Chair c. William Park (TH) d. Ryan Manning (CC) Vice-Chair e. Gregory Smith (CC) Secretary Terms Expire Nov. 2015 f. Pam Steffes (TH) g. Barbara Cohn (CC) h. Nazly Mofidi (TH) i. Michael Davis (CC) b. Liaisons 1. AMSUS Liaison: Greg Smith and Barbara Cohn 2. Chief Clinical Consultant: Dawn Clary 3. AFOS (Armed Forces Optometric Society): Greg Smith 4. COA (Commissioned Officers Association): Dawn Clary 5. OFRD (Office of Force Readiness and Deployment): Larry Zubel 6. JOAG (Junior Officer Advisory Group): Greg Smith 7. HSO- PAC (Health Service Officer PAC): Barbara Cohn 8. HSO Symposium Planning Barbara Cohn 9. FDA (Food and Drug Administration): Kimberly Lewandowski-Walker 10. Awards: Ryan Manning 11. PHS Recruitment/Applicant Placement: David Bellware 12. HSPAC Career Development: Sarah Stienbarger 13. APHA Vision Care: Ryan Manning Date: July 2, 2014 8:00 AM Alaska 9:00 AM Pacific 10:00 AM Mountain 11:00 AM Central 12:00 PM Eastern All other time zones DYOM (Do your own math) Dial-in Instructions: 1-907-729-6585 Back up number if we are not on this would be 907-729-6586 or 907-729-6587
Call to Order: Present: Sarah Stienbarger, Nazly Mofidi, Mike Davis, Pam Steffes, Will Park, Ryan Manning, Michael Candreva, Dawn Clary Absent: Greg Smith, Darcy Jones, Barb Cohn, Larry Zubel, Kimberly Lewandowski-Walker, Dave Bellware Continuing Business 1. OPAG Coin: Update 1. Still only $150 of contributions. Checks sent to COF. Still need total $400 to start the process. Will send his address again. 2. Post meeting update. Dr. Clary will be sending a check for $325 to cover the total. The total required is actually $475. When we get the total amount of funds we can place our order for the initial bid of coins and start selling them. As a reminder the goal is for us to be able to fund our own awards. 2. Board Certification 1. Over 10% of all Optometrist have taken or started for ABO 2. NBEO is the newest form. NBEO board certification a. Must have 3 yrs experience or 450 on each NBEO test or residency b. Must take their exam (CPDO) after initial application (varies the wait time) c. The CPDO exam consists of: i. 20 patient cases (with 3-6 items each) = 80 points ii. 40 regular, individual solo items = 40 points iii. 20 minicases (each with 2 items) = 40 points iv. 160 points total d. Total Pearson VUE seat time is 4 hours: multiple sites (3 in Arizona) e. Exam date is September 26, 2014 f. $150 for application g. $500 to register for test- must retest in 7 years h. $150 for yearly renewal i. Renewal is every 2 years i. 50 CE credits ii. 10 self-assessment modules (their CE credits) iii. Perform a 2 chart reviews and write a report of findings/ outcomes 3. AFOS and PHS do not current support any boards for board pay. Only FAAO. 3. ICD 10 1. Push pack another year 2. Riverside California: coders on staff going through training. No training for OD yet. Coders are providing OD s with information after the meetings. Could go to training in next year.
3. Phoenix: staff did some training when they though was coming out. Nothing recently. Will start again when closer to date. 4. Gallup coders have done some training. Using integrated problem list with SNOWMED. Use a link between ICD 9 and ICD 10 eventually. 5. Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute (PCLI) did training in Anchorage Alaska and several other cities where they have clinics. It was 2 hours and they provided CME credits 4. Meaningful Use 1. We all should be ordering meds as of July 1 on EMR system 2. How long do they have to be be on staff to apply for meaningful use? Immediate enrollment is the consensus New Business 1. Project and bylaws update a. We need to update our bylaws to be closer in line to the HSPAC i. http://usphs-hso.org/?q=pac/bylaws ii. Article 1: Name-Greg iii. Article 2: Purpose-Greg iv. Article 3: Membership-Sarah v. Article 4: Term of Appointment-Barb vi. Article 5: Nomination Process-Nazly vii. Article 6: Duties of Officers-Ryan viii. Article 7: Chief Professional Officer-NOT NEEDED ix. Article 8: Operations and Procedures-Will x. Article 9: Subcommittees-Pam xi. Article 10: Rules of Order-Pam xii. Article 11: Amendments-Darcy b. Everyone completed their required section. It was forwarded to everyone for review. All comments will be needed in the next 30 days. i. Ryan Manning have a few questions 1. Would we like to have a chair elect first, lead into chair positionvote? 2. Would we like to have previous experience before allow to be chair-vote? 3. These questions will be put forward in email for voting. c. Will send to HSO PAC for approval in 30 days 2. Membership a. We currently have Tribal Hire and Civil Service as voting Members of OPAG. We are the only PAG that has this representation. Here is a representation of how we have felt via email. 1. Transition TH and CS to liaisons at large for membership to OPAG but no voting rights. That would allow them to attend meetings, vote for awards, and participate in daily work activities. 3. Promotion Rates a. No optometrist was promoted this year. We need to discuss this as a group.
b. Recent posting to PHS chat. http://www.phschat.com/forums/content.php Pretty good forum for discussion. c. This is some number crunching from a colleague. Looking at the CCMIS website, I ran a few numbers from the past 5 years for the TO5, HSO group specifically. 2009: 41/95 (43%), leaving 54 non-promoted (np) and rolled into the 2010 pool 2010: 54/126 (including the prev yrs 54 np s) (43%), 72 np 2011: 59/137 (43%), 78 np 2012: 72/168 (43%), 96 np 2013: 49/190 (26%), 141 np 2014: 52/226 (23%), 174 np 2015 projected: 59/255 (23%), 196 np 2016 proj: 64/277 (23%), 213 np 2017 proj: 68/294 (23%), 226 np This gross analysis makes several assumptions. I set the incoming first look promotion eligibles (for future projections) at 81 which was the avg of the past 5yrs. There is no accounting for attrition or recruitment/calls to active duty numbers that may affect year group promotion eligible numbers. EPPs are not considered at all. Even though over-simplified, the numbers of np s from 09 (54) through today (174) are surprising. That puts an incredible amount of competition into the system. Seeing that my career field within HSO had zero Officers on the promotion list(s) this year, I m not feeling very optimistic about the future. d. Admins rebuttal: http://www.phschat.com/forums/showth...ion-statistics A few years ago, I looked at promotion board scores and the sum of the successful precept averages, and rank ordered the sum according to Eligible Temporary Grade. At the time, it seemed clear to me that within certain categories, a competitive score was quite a bit higher for some categories compared to other categories, and this pattern extended to O-6, O-5 and O-4 grade promotions. What caused this trend is subject to debate, but I think the quality of the candidate pool, and the expectations of the promotion boards, can fluctuate from year to year. Competition among officers who aren't very competitive for promotion isn't really competition at all... In other words, if you are an average performer competing against other average performers, there's not much sense worrying about competition in terms of sheer numbers. What you have to do is figure out what your category promotion board really wants to see in a competitive officer, then hit and exceed those benchmarks. Do that, and you won't miss another promotion. But the most important thing about the Corps (and best) is that you can re-invent yourself. @silverlining: only you can feel optimistic about your future. e. 5 OD s were up for O6. not sure how many up for O5
f. Mike Davis noticed that only 1 IHS person was promoted this year. Most of the promotions were from administrative roles and billets within the other services. This could have led to less clinical roles being upheld as a desirable option. g. Mike Candreva sent information to IHS headquarters about this year s promotion process. They try to make board very diverse and every board can have different bias or look at benchmarks in different ways. He thinks we took a hit for clinical backgrounds in comparison to administrative backgrounds. We need to try to encourage them to realize we are clinical and that has value and we do not always have time for administrative problems. We should talk to Dawn Clary about this in the future since Mike is no longer the Chief Clinical Consultant. We are competitive. We do need to work on PHS activities. We must move forward because we cannot change the past. IHS does support us and will move this forward for this year s process. h. HSO PAC i. Sarah volunteered for HSO PAC ii. Ryan volunteered for several subcommittees iii. They will have to wait to see if they are selected for any positions i. What can OPAG do? Chair can bring forward to PAG Chair. We can write a letter and call him to try to to value our clinical impact. Less man hours equal less patients seen and less money for the clinics. j. The question was Is it one in and one out? If one OD O-6 goes out it does not necessarily mean and OD will get that O-6 since we are in HSO category. That would make it more attractive for us to be in our own PAC. This was discussed a long time ago with Dr. Richard Hatch but we did not move forward on this. It would not be a short fix. k. We may consider looking into billets that are outside the I.H.S. in administrative roles if we are interested in promotions. l. Mike Davis and Sarah Stienbarger work on letter with information Mike Candreva will send Liaison Reports 1. AMSUS: Greg Smith/Barbara Cohn-N/R 2. Chief Clinical Consultant: Dawn Clary a. Eye Care Coordination Committee b. Billet Report c. Promotions-need to move forward while this topic is hot to help our category. Please do not forget to help the younger officers move forward 3. AFOS: Greg Smith-N/R a. Please join because they are a good advocate for us all 4. COA: Dawn Clary-N/R a. We need to come up with a plan for getting optometry back in the board. We need to keep our eyes open for when the field position opens. 5. OFRD: Larry Zubel-N/R 6. JOAG: Kelly Dalton
a. JOAG meeting was at the symposium, it was mostly awards recognition and a visit by the CPO s. The one thing that was discussed that would affect all officers was deployment to assist with unaccompanied alien children. I am assuming that everyone is aware of that as an email was sent out. CAPT Beck stated that officers who are on call in July or August are very likely to be deployed, and anyone who is fluent in Spanish will definitely be deployed. 7. HSO-PAC: Barbara Cohn-N/R 8. HSO Symposium Planning: Barbara Cohn-N/R 9. FDA: Kim Lewandowski-Walker-N/R 10. Awards: Ryan Manning a. Student award. Will send out feelers at the end of each quarter to help people remember your students. 11. PHS Recruitment/Applicant Placement: David Bellware a. 2 Fairbanks, Alaska b. 2 Wasilla, Alaska c. 1 Gallup, NM d. Riverside California just filled with a new OD that will start in 1 week. 12. HSPAC Career Development: Sarah Stienbarger 13. APHA Vision Care: Ryan Manning -N/R Future Optometry Meetings: Next OPAG meeting: September 3, 2014 8:00 AM Alaska 9:00 AM Pacific 10:00 AM Mountain 11:00 AM Central 12:00 PM Eastern All other time zones DYOM (Do your own math)