Optometrists and online eyewear sellers may end their long-running feud over mobile vision prescription apps in Rhode Island this year.

Legislation that would require contact lens and glasses wearers to get an in-person eye exam at least every two years if they want to renew their prescriptions passed the House Human Services Committee on Wednesday night.

But in what lawmakers described as a "compromise" between the two rival camps, the bill includes tweaks that should allow mobile prescription apps to function as long as their customers don't skip in-person visits entirely.

The online eyewear fight, which has played out in capitols across the country, kicked off in Rhode Island about five years ago as telemedicine was starting to take off, but before it exploded during the COVID pandemic.

As companies such as Simple Contacts, 1-800 Contacts and Warby Parker began growing mobile apps that allowed customers to get a vision test and buy eyewear over the phone, traditional brick-and-mortar optometrists cried foul.  

They warned that if contact lens users skip in-person eye exams in favor of a mobile app designed to market and sell eyewear, serious vision and medical problems could get missed.

On their behalf, lawmakers introduced a series of bills that would require users of corrective eyewear to visit local optometrists in person for an eye exam.

"Online applications that masquerade as telemedicine and purport to provide a 'convenient' and 'cost-effective' service for Rhode Islanders looking for a contact lens or eyeglass prescription reduce standards and they are costly," Robert Parks, president of the Rhode Island Optometric Association wrote in testimony to lawmakers.

But the online eyewear companies said the legislation sought by the optometrists was intended to protect them from competition and more convenient, less expensive digital options.

The bill "was introduced with the sole purpose of restricting the use of telemedicine to renew prescriptions for glasses for Rhode Island patients by introducing impossible-to-meet, medically unnecessary criteria that are designed to stifle competition at the expense of patients," Christopher Grimm, a lobbyist for Warby Parker, told a House Committee last year.

According to Warby Parker, for younger people with no noticeable change in vision, the American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends comprehensive eye exams between two and four years. 

The company said Georgia and South Carolina are the only states thatban ocular telemedicine entirely, but Connecticut passed regulations recently the company did not support.

Sen. Frank Ciccone, sponsor of the Senate version of the eyecare bill, said it was based on what was passed in Kentucky.

Opponents of the original bill include the American Telemedicine Association, Rhode Island Business Coalition, Rhode Island TechNet and Americans for Vision Care Innovation, which represents 1-800 Contacts.

The bill passed the House on the last day of last year's legislative session but died in the Senate.

Sponsored by North Providence Democrat William O'Brien, the bill that passed committee Wednesday, setting it up for a vote by the full House, makes small changes sought by the online companies that the optometrists apparently can live with. 

The new version adds the phrase "assessment mechanism" to ways the bill allows someone to get an "eye assessment" and it cuts the requirement that anyone approving a prescription have a "physical address at which the provider practices." (The provider still has to have a physical address, but it can be one they are "associated with."

Erik Castaneda. a lobbyist for 1-800 Contacts, told the Senate Health and Human Services Committee in March that the company would support the bill if the two changes were made.  

"This is a bill that's been around the House for along time, and we have successfully negotiated a compromise," House Health and Human Services Chairman Stephen Casey said Wednesday. "We did this last year as well and it got cut up in the Senate."

So far, the Senate has not introduced an amended version; Ciccone said in March he expected would happen in a "few weeks." 

"There are few bills that have been worked on for compromise more intensely than this bill is worked on," Senate Health and Human Services Chairman Josh Miller said in March.