(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The Health Care Alliance for Patient Safety (HCAPS) commends Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA) for the introduction of the Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act (H.R. 4282). If enacted, this legislation will ban the use of telephone calls with artificial or prerecorded voices, commonly known as robocalls, as a method for verifying patients’ prescriptions, a critical update to the contact lens prescription verification process, and an important safety enhancement for millions of contact lens wearers.

The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act will enhance patient safety by prohibiting prescription verification via robocall and replacing it with a paper trail that requires online sellers to use direct communication. The act ensures prescriptions remain accurate and that patients receive their prescribed contacts rather than an unapproved substitution that can cause eye health and vision problems.

“The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act is a significant step forward in protecting contact lens patients from potentially harmful practices still present in today’s marketplace. I want to thank Representatives Griffith and Fletcher for their leadership in reintroducing this important legislation,” said David Cockrell, O.D., Chairman of the Health Care Alliance for Patient Safety.

The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act amends the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA), landmark legislation that allows millions of Americans to purchase their contact lenses online, removing a critical barrier to care. The FCLCA explicitly allows the use of telephone, fax, or e-mail for verifying the validity of contact lens prescriptions, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has interpreted the law to also allow for robocall verification. Verification with doctors' offices is crucial to ensuring accurate and safe prescriptions, and robocalls put this process at risk. 

A continuation of ineffective robocall verification threatens the safety of patients. The information relayed in robocalls is often received by a number not belonging to a doctor of optometry or an ophthalmologist, or does not align with a patient’s medical record, making it difficult, or even impossible, to correctly identify the patient and the proper prescription within the current eight-hour passive verification window. As a result, patients can end up with outdated or incorrect prescriptions, which can lead to serious health complications, including infections and other sight-threatening conditions, such as microbial keratitis, corneal edema, ulcers, and neovascularization.

The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act is an important step towards increasing the safety of the more than 45 million Americans who wear contact lenses, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Class II and Class III regulated medical devices, for safe and effective vision correction. 

The Health Care Alliance for Patient Safety is committed to closing loopholes within the existing verification process and stopping the substitution of lenses to reduce the risk of preventable vision loss.

For more information on this legislation, visit congress.gov. Stay up to date on all regulatory and policy news impacting patient safety by joining the Health Care Alliance for Patient Safety.