President’s Message

The concept of “standards of care” has always been at the forefront of this council’s activities from the very beginning: from defining to formulating, validating, disseminating and eventually applying them. We have always believed that this is one of the cornerstones of delivering quality eye care to our patients. Well defined standards of care not only give us a general direction that we can follow but it also allows us to see abnormal patterns of deviations from such. They are now not only important for the clinicians as they define, for the most part, what constitute good medicine but are now also of equal importance to other stakeholders in healthcare like our patients and 3rd party payors.

The Committee on Standards has been successfully approved to be a permanent committee of the PAO during the last referendum and this highlights the importance its purpose. The continuing output of this committee is now creating a noticeable impact in the practice of Ophthalmology. Several changes in the syllabus of the PBO have been in response to the committee’s recommendations. Likewise, discussions with PHIC and DOH are now being backed by locally produced guidelines. Relevant portions of this particular cataract CPG were used during discussions for reimbursements and formulary inclusion and we hope that they will produce positive impact soon. More guidelines and standards such as this one will be coming out in the next few years. It is increasingly important that you are aware of these guidelines in order for you to keep on delivering quality eye care to our patients.

Sherman O. Valero, MD, FPAO
President
Philippine Journal of Ophthalmology