Contact Lenses

Make Specialty Contact Lenses a Profit-Maker with the Right Manufacturer

By Richard W. Baker, OD, FAAO

ADVERTORIAL

Specialty contact lenses are a practice niche with potential for substantial profit–if you partner with the right contact lens manufacturer.

Specialty contact lenses for conditions such as kerataconus represents an opportunity to serve patients and to expand your practice. Contact lens patients comprise about 23 percent of my patient base, meaning one out of every four patients is in contact lenses. Of that 23 percent, about 10 percent are in specialty contact lenses. I typically see at least six of these patients every week. Keeping these patients satisfied is easier thanks to my partnership with contact lens manufacturer ABB CONCISE. I know I can rely on them to deliver specialty contact lenses such as ABB CONCISE Definitive custom soft silicone hydrogel and the KeraSoft IC that will keep patients comfortable and avoid dropouts. Another advantage of this partnership is that they not only provide superior products but do so in a timely fashion so patients never have to wait long for their specialty contact lenses to be delivered.

Silicone Hydrogel Specialty Contact Lenses Keep Patients Comfortable
One of the chief reasons my specialty contact lens patients are kept comfortable in ABB CONCISE Definitive and KeraSoft IC is that they are made of silicone hydrogel, a material that some patients say makes the contact lens feel like it has disappeared in their eyes. The silicone hydrogel provides more oxygen to the eyes, enabling patients to wear them longer without their eyes drying out.

Profitable Opportunity in Specialty Contact Lenses
Keeping specialty contact lens patients comfortable is important, first from a patient care standpoint, but avoiding specialty contact lens dropouts also ensures profitability for the practice. I estimate that the 10 percent of my contact lens patients who are in specialty contact lenses bring in at least four to ten times more in revenue per-patient than my standard contact lens patients. The level of revenue per- specialty contact lens patient varies greatly depending on the complexity of the case. At the high end of the per-patient revenue ladder would be a post-surgical keratoconus patient who I might see over the course of three or four months generating at least $1,200 more in revenue. That compares to the typical up-to-$200 per-patient revenue generated from standard contact lens patients.

Satisfied Specialty Contact Lens Patients Refer
A satisfied specialty contact lens patient is a patient who is impressed enough to refer your practice to others. I estimate that my long-term specialty contact lens patients are up to four times more likely than my other contact lens patients to refer my practice to friends and family.

With So Much at Stake, You Need the Right Partner
With patient eye health and comfort in question, partnering with the right manufacturer is essential. ABB CONCISE has a great consultation staff to help me with my difficult fits and reliable representatives who don’t make us wait to get answers to our questions. For example, if I want to prescribe a particular lens, and need to consult on the fit, the consultant helps with choosing the right specialty design lens and fit for the patient. They are also there to help modify the fit or design.

What’s more, the products that ABB CONCISE delivers are of a reliable quality. It is rare that we ever have to send a lens back because it is not up to our standards.

Get Certified to Serve Specialty Contact Lens Patients
To take advantage of the opportunity to serve specialty contact lens patients, many manufacturers require certification. For example, manufacturers such as Paragon Vision Sciences provide courses to become certified in fitting patients in their products, like CRT. Often, the manufacturer will sponsor the certification process and ODs are able to take the courses online or in a classroom. The time commitment to become certified isn’t great. I give two-hour instructional lectures for Paragon CRT followed by a certification test that takes about a half-hour to complete.

ABB CONCISE also offers training courses online at abbconcise.com for many of their specialty lenses, like KeraSoft IC and ICD 16.5.

Prepare Staff to Work with Specialty Contact Lenses
Staff has to be up to date on specialty contact lens terminology and they must be able to speak with knowledge and confidence about the specialty contact lens products your practice works with. They also must know how to schedule these patients, meaning they must know how many office visits and about how much chair time per visit will be necessary for the various types of patients fitted in specialty contact lenses.

They can attain this knowledge through continuing education classes and by specialty contact lens manufacturer reps who are usually happy to make a visit to the practice to talk about their products and answer staff questions. Specialty contact lens manufacturers are eager for practices to become familiar with their products and will provide staff education training.

Invest in Needed Technology
In addition to needed education, doctors will need to equip their office with the necessary instrumentation. A topographer, which costs around $10,000, will be needed and you also should have an instrument such as a pachymeter, which costs around $2,500, or a spectral SD-OCT, which can cost up to $60,000 and which has many other uses in addition to fitting specialty contact lenses. Of this instrumentation, the most important to invest in for specialty contact lens care is a topographer.

A Worthwhile Investment
The education and necessary technology investment must be considered, but the potential to serve a new subset of patients, and generate additional profit, is great. Devoting the needed time and resources to becoming equipped to serve specialty contact lens patients–and partnering with a company like ABB CONCISE–can make this a winning endeavor for your patients.

Richard W. Baker, OD, is the owner of Lamorinda Optometry in Lafayette, Calif. To contact him: rbakerod@pacbell.net.

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