The American Board of Certification in Medical Optometry is an independent, nonprofit organization that provides recognition and certification of US licensed optometrists who have chosen to specialize in medical optometry after receiving their professional degree and state license to practice. Certification is achieved by successfully completing an ACOE accredited one-year postgraduate residency training program in medical optometry, passing the written ACMO examination testing advanced competence in medical optometry, documenting two years practicing medical optometry immediately prior to application and other criteria of examination deemed appropriate.
What is Medical Optometry?
Medical Optometry encompasses the medical diagnosis, management and treatment of primary and secondary diseases and disorders of the human eye, adnexa and visual tracts.
Value of ABCMO Certification
ABCMO certification provides the public, credentialing committees and fellow medical practitioners a national, uniform indicator that an optometrist possesses specialized, advanced knowledge, skills and competence in the practice of medical optometry as governed by their state license of record.
NOTE: Applicants can use the NBEO online Score Request Form to have encoded official ACMO scores transmitted to ABCMO. For more information click here.
Presentation to ARBO
Last June, ABCMO was invited to brief the Association of Regulatory Boards of Optometry. At that time, Dr. Myers stressed that "board certification" for general practice optometrists was not required, proposed or contemplated by any health care organization and, specifically, was not part of the recently passed "Health Care Reform Act of 2010". He explained this was because the Joint Commission On Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations affirmed, in 1986, that while specialists are expected by accredited healthcare facilities to be board certified in their specialty, defined-license, independent prescribing practitioners such as dentists, optometrists, audiologists and psychologists are eligible to be granted those privileges supported by their degrees and state practice acts and need no additional credentials to be granted medical staff membership and general practice clinical privileges.
This reflects the fact board certification is used to denote advanced competence in a specialty of the profession in which a practitioner is licensed and this advanced competence is achieved by additional, accredited, post-graduate clinical residency training, passage of a written examination testing that advanced competence in the specialty followed by certification by a specialty board. Thus there is no need, or precedence, for requiring additional credentials of those engaged in the general practice of a defined-license, independent prescribing profession as they are within the authority of their respective state practice acts.
To download the power point slides of the Presentation to ARBO - click here
Application Deadlines Extended for CP2 and CP3
Advisory Board Actions
At its 2011 annual meeting in November in Boston during the AAO meeting, the ABCMO Advisory Board approved the following actions:
- Career Paths 2 and 3 deadlines for applications were extended to August 1, 2013. The Board felt insufficient time (18 months) had been given for these career paths and the customary "start-up phase" for other specialty boards in the past had been 3 years.
- Application fees of $175 for Career Paths 1 and 2, and $275 for Career Path 3 were established, effective January 1, 2012,
- Expiration dates for Certifications to change from 7 to 10 years after date of issuance to comply with common practices of other specialty boards, effective retroactively.
- Study suggests the Maintenance of Certification process for re-certification every 10 years will be based upon meeting existing state re-licensing CE hourly requirements and re-passage of the ACMO examination with the annual or bi-annual CE hours to be in medical optometry and COPE approved.
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