CLINICAL

  contact lenses

By the Numbers

How much does your contact lens practice mean to your business?

JASON R. MILLER, O.D., M.B.A., F.A.A.O.

Contact lenses are a critically important arm of many optometric practices, making up roughly 30% of all exams. To analyze and, more importantly, improve this side of your business, you must measure it.

Here, I discuss how to measure your contact lens business and provide tips on how to make the most of this crucial profit center.

What to measure

Though many different metrics can be analyzed, the most important stats include:

1. Production per contact lens patient: total production (evaluation or fitting fee + cost of contact lenses purchased)/total number of contact lens patients.

2. Recall rate for your contact lens patients: (the percentage of your contact lens patients who return for care).

These two measurements reveal how much your contact lens patients spend and how often they return to your office. Though there will be variances from month to month, monitoring the overall trend of these two stats will shed some light on how your contact lens business is performing.

Calculating Production

Use this formula to calculate the production per contact lens patient:

Interpreting the data

If your analysis identifies a problem, for example, your recall rate keeps decreasing, look inward at the practice to see what changes can be made to improve those stats.

Next, develop a plan to maximize your patient’s comfort and compliance to prevent contact lens dropouts. For example:

▸ Prioritize annual contact lens supplies. If your practice has a low production per contact lens patients, make selling annual supplies a priority.

Start in the exam room: “Mr. Smith, I have finalized your contact lens prescription and approved you to order an annual supply of contact lenses.” Explain your recommendations to your staff to ensure they are carried out.

▸ Evaluate your prices. Look at how your contact lens fees compare with your competition, including optical chains and online retailers. This is something easily done by the consumer, and may affect your capture rate with contact lens wearers.

If your prices per box of contact lenses are too high, consider more competitive pricing. You can offset the difference in price within your professional fees (evaluation and fitting fees) for contact lens wearers.

▸ Focus on patient comfort and compliance. Many patients spend their workdays in front of a computer, so dry eyes as a result of digital eye fatigue is a common problem. Actively diagnose and treat any underlying ocular surface disease while focusing on high-quality silicone hydrogel lenses and/or daily disposable lenses, depending on the situation.

▸ Consider daily disposables. Daily disposable lenses have a higher compliance rate than two-week and monthly replacement lenses, and most likely will yield a higher recall rate. In our practice, patients in daily disposables are more inclined to order an annual supply and present more frequently for their exams to renew their contact lens prescription.

Future growth

By measuring contact lens success in your practice, and implementing the outlined solutions, you are well on your way to preventing contact lens dropout and growing your practice. OM

DR. MILLER IS A PARTNER IN A PRIVATE PRACTICE IN POWELL, OHIO, AND IS AN ADJUNCT FACULTY MEMBER FOR THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY. SEND COMMENTS TO OPTOMETRICMANAGEMENT@GMAIL.COM.