IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION ON SENATE BILL 230

Last week the Florida legislature passed Senate Bill 230, a truth-in-advertising bill designed to protect patients by ensuring that healthcare providers use the correct titles and designations consistent with their training and certifications.

While organized Anesthesiology has been the bill’s primary proponent for the last several years, many medical specialty groups supported the truth-in-advertising policies of SB 230 particularly as it relates to patient safety and care. Unfortunately, there appears to be a great deal of misinformation circulating regarding the bill’s scope and effect. For sake of the truth, we thought it appropriate to let you know what the bill actually does, and what it does not do.  

• SB 230 reflects the fact that “Physician” is a term commonly understood to mean a person licensed to practice medicine.
• To protect patients from being misled, the bill simply prohibits all healthcare providers who are not licensed to practice medicine from advertising themselves as “Physicians” unless they are permitted to do so by their practice act.
• Florida’s Optometric Practice Act has NEVER authorized optometrists to advertise themselves to the public as “Physicians,” and neither does SB 230.
• SB 230 does NOT prohibit optometrists from advertising themselves as “doctors”.
  •  In fact, the Florida Optometric Practice Act continues to authorize optometrists to use the designations “Doctor” and “Doctor of Optometry.
• SB 230 does NOT impede an optometrist’s ability to bill and seek reimbursement from insurance programs, including Medicare.
  • In fact, various states like Colorado, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Texas, and Virginia restrict optometrists from advertising themselves as “physicians." In those states, there have been no recorded instances of optometrists having problems billing Medicare and being reimbursed for services rendered.

We hope this sets the record straight.