Government Warns Eye Doctors: Provide Prescriptions After Eye Exams Or Else

It’s really easy to find eyeglass stores that also offer eye exams. You get your eyes checked, pick out the frames, and get the final product all from the same place, so you might not notice that you didn’t get a copy of your prescription after the exam. That’s against the law, and one federal agency is reminding eye doctors of the costly penalty for failing to provide prescriptions.

The Federal Trade Commission’s Eyeglass Rule requires that patients receive a copy of their new prescription after an exam — even if the patient doesn’t request it. Nor can the eye doctor charge a fee for releasing the prescription.

Eye doctors are also barred from offering exams only to people who buy glasses from them, so if you go to an eyeglass store and just want the eye exam, they can’t turn you away.

Finally, the prescription can’t include any sort of language that the eye exam is only accurate for the glasses sold by the eye doctor’s store.

Violations of the Eyeglass Rule can result in fines of $16,000 per violation, which is why the FTC recently sent warning letters to 38 eyeglass prescribers [sample PDF] with warnings that the Commission had received complaints about patients failing to receive copies of their prescriptions.

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