Optometrists and therapeutic optometrists may not use their name or professional identification on office signage unless they are actually present and practicing there during public hours.
Sec. 351.458. PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY; USE OF NAME OR PROFESSIONAL IDENTIFICATION. (a) An optometrist or therapeutic optometrist may not use, or cause or allow to be used, the optometrist's or therapeutic optometrist's name or professional identification, as authorized by Chapter 104, on or near the door, window, wall, directory, sign, or listing of an office or place of practice, unless the optometrist or therapeutic optometrist is actually present and practicing optometry or therapeutic optometry in that office or place during the hours it is open to the public for the practice of optometry or therapeutic optometry. (b) An optometrist or therapeutic optometrist may not practice in an office or place where a name or professional identification on or near the door, window, wall, directory, sign, or listing of the office or place, or where a name or professional identification used in connection with the office or place, indicates that it is owned, operated, supervised, staffed, directed, or attended by a person not actually present and practicing optometry or therapeutic optometry in that office or place during the hours it is open to the public for the practice of optometry or therapeutic optometry. (c) To be actually present for purposes of Subsections (a) and (b), the optometrist or therapeutic optometrist must be physically present in the office or place of practice: (1) for more than half of the total number of hours the office or place is open to the public for the practice of optometry or therapeutic optometry in each calendar month for at least nine months in each calendar year; or (2) for at least half of the time the optometrist or therapeutic optometrist conducts or supervises the practice of optometry or therapeutic optometry. (d) To be practicing optometry or therapeutic optometry for purposes of Subsections (a) and (b), the optometrist or therapeutic optometrist must regularly and personally in the office or place of practice: (1) examine the eyes of some of the persons for whom prescriptions have been issued in that office or place; or (2) supervise those eye examinations. (e) This section does not require the physical presence of a person who is ill, injured, or otherwise temporarily incapacitated. (f) Section 351.361(c) applies to this section. Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 388, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1999.