The owners of optical salons, together with the Latvian Optometrists and Opticians Association (LOOA), call on the Ministry of Health (MOH) to establish a temporary regulation in the sector, which would allow optometrists to continue working in optical salons, which is currently prohibited by the regulatory framework, until the necessary regulatory amendments are made. Also, the industry asks the Ministry of the Interior to set a moratorium during which the Health Inspectorate (VI) would not apply fines and other types of sanctions for non-compliance with the existing requirements, taking into account that the time required for the development, coordination and approval of all regulatory changes and clarifications can take up to a year.
Hostages of bureaucracy
An ambiguous situation has developed in the optical salon industry, where a large part of the optical salons operating in Latvia have fallen into the jungle of regulatory acts and bureaucracy, as a result of which, according to representatives of the industry, there is a risk that in the near future people who need, for example, glasses or other vision correction services, who not directly related to the need to see an eye doctor, could face difficulties in receiving these services. As industry representatives explain, an integral part of an optical salon is the services of an on-site optometrist who examines the patient’s vision and writes out a prescription for the customer, for example, for the purchase of spectacle lenses. However, the currently valid regulations prohibit such an arrangement. Namely, since 2020, when optometrists became medical practitioners in accordance with amendments to the regulations,
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