The state illegally waived some testing requirements to grant licenses to a number of eye doctors from 2020 to 2023. With a new regulation taking effect on Saturday, all future test takers will be required to complete the three-part national exam.
But that's left open the question of how the state should handle the practicing optometrists in the state who opted for the alternatives during COVID and a period after that emergency was lifted.
Rep. Kim Moser said the state has to strike a balance between competing interests.
"As policy makers, our responsibility is to balance compliance with the law, protection of the public, and fairness to those who relied upon the actions taken by their licensing board," she said Thursday.
For now, those who took the alternate exams, trusting they were okayed by the Kentucky Board of Optometric Examiners, can still practice and renew their licenses through that pathway.
"So the alternative paths that were approved through regulation previously, those people can still renew with those alternative paths," KBOE General Counsel Kristen Webb Hill confirmed.
WAVE-TV reports the National Board of Examiners in Optometry has signaled that it believes 15 optometrists who took the alternative exams are practicing and is continuing to raise concerns about their competency. Currently, there is no way for the public to access data on which eye doctors completed the alternative tests.