On Thursday, February 16, 2012, the Florida Board of Medicine (BOM) and Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine (BOOM) both published the final informed consent form for cataract surgery that the FSO worked on during the past year. This standard informed consent form spells out the risks of cataract surgery thus mitigating the risks of unnecessary adverse incident reporting and that upon execution of the standard informed consent form, there would be a rebuttable presumption that the doctor properly disclosed the risks.

Prior to the adoption of this form, Sections 395.0197 and 458.351, Florida Statutes, require that "adverse incidents" resulting from surgical and medical procedures be promptly reported to appropriate health care regulatory agencies. Those same statutes also provide that "recognized risks" of medical or surgical procedures, which have been properly disclosed and consented to by the patient, are not "adverse incidents" and should not be reported. Prior to the 2011 Legislative Session, Florida law provided no guidance to patients, doctors and the health care community regarding the recognized risks of cataract surgery that do not need to be reported. This deficiency in the Statutes led to recognized risks of cataract surgery being mischaracterized as adverse incidents. This in turn resulted in "over-reporting" which unnecessarily embroiled ophthalmologists in extensive and time-consuming disciplinary proceedings before the BOM and in medical malpractice litigation.

The rules adopted represent the culmination of significant efforts by the FSO to represent its members on important matters that directly affect the profession of ophthalmology.

Click here to download a copy of the Informed Consent Form