Ophthalmic Lenses

Spotlight Personalized Lenses with a Lens Education Center

By Jeffrey Rohlf, LDO

Create a lens education center where you can walk patients through the personalized lens measurement process and demonstrate the value of this premium vision correction option.

As an eyecare professional, you have an obligation and business opportunity to inform your patients about the best options available to enhance their vision. Topping that list of options are personalized ophthalmic lenses that are custom-made for each patient’s unique vision needs and way of seeing. With personalized lenses, no two patients have the same prescription because each lens is designed to accommodate individual variations such as the frequency of head turning when speaking to someone. Personalized lenses also can correct for slight aberrations in vision across just one portion of one eye.

Personalized Lenses = High Patient Satisfaction

When our dispensary introduced personalized lens services, we offered a special, discounted promotional deal to test the new product.

One of our first patients to opt for personalized lenses was a local mail carrier who said that being part of our pilot program was the only way he could afford these premium lenses. He was skeptical that there would be any difference. Once we put him in the new lenses, he was amazed and became a loyal patient.

About a year after receiving his personalized lenses, the eyeglasses broke and he had to go back to wearing his old lenses. He called us up jokingly begging for help because he said that now he could never go back to the vision provided by his old eyeglasses.

This episode taught our optical an important lesson: Once a personalized lens patient, forever a personalized lens patient.

Personalized Lens Profit

The challenge of personalized lenses–that they typically cost patients at least 35 percent more than conventional lenses–are also a key profit-making advantage. After implementing the Essilor Visioffice personalized lens system last spring the optical I manage, The Ohio State University College of Optometry Clinic, saw revenues increase immediately and I believe most offices have the potential to increase revenues by at least 25 percent–and that is just the start of the potential for profit. From my research into the success of other opticals that offer custom lenses, I know that selling these lenses can grow dispensary revenues by as much as 40 percent annually. Vision benefit plans allow dispensaries a significantly higher rate of return for personalized lenses. Personalized lenses are not just available to for-pay patients with disposable incomes; vision plans accept them, as well and vision benefit plans allow dispensaries to charge 40 percent more for personalized lenses.

Create the Lens Center

Our dispensary is large so we were able to devote a small room of 10 feet by 12 feet adjacent to the main frame board area to selling personalized lenses. In addition to the Visioffice system we have a small collection of eyewear displayed in the room along with point of sale materials such as posters and other graphics that illustrate the difference between vision with a conventional ophthalmic lens and with the aid of a custom lens. But you don’t need a separate room to create your own personalized education center.

A corner of your optical that is not heavily used or is not generating as much profit as you hoped can be transformed into an education center. All you need is the measurement system and point of sale materials to set it apart from the rest of the optical. We are able to invite patients into this separate room to teach them about our personalized lens system and take their measurements for their own pair of personalized lenses.

Personalized Lens System Cost

For a lab to fabricate personalized lenses, you need to do two things: take accurate, personalized measurements and communicate that data accurately to the lab. That process has been simplified with Visioffice, but some training is required. To provide custom lenses for patients you first must invest in a system that takes the needed measurements–including vertex distance (refracted and fitted), pantoscopic tilt and panoramic angle–and digitally measures personal variations like turns of the head and the patient’s eye movement tendencies. We purchased the Essilor Visioffice for $10,000 to $11,000. In addition to purchasing the system outright, you can lease it or own it through co-op programs. We anticipate that the Visioffice instrument, a computerized system that comes with a pair of measurement goggles that patients wear for the system to digitally record their head and eye movements, will pay for itself within two years.

Have the Personalized Lens Conversation

Here is an example of a conversation I might have with a patient in our personalized lens education center:

Optician: “Sally, I’m very excited to tell you about the personalized lenses we offer to make your eyeglasses even better. To ensure your new eyeglasses are tailor-made to your specific vision needs, we will need to take measurements first, which should take about 10 minutes.”

Sally: “And you think I’ll really like these custom glasses a lot better than the ones I have now?”

Optician: “I know you will!These lenses are digitally manufactured, every detail of the lens is custom made, tailored specifically for you. The result is more clarity and overall better vision with fewer distortions. An analogy might be the difference between regular TV and high-definition TV. You know how you now notice the finer details of peoples’ faces on TV with high-definition? And how you probably never noticed those things when you watched TV years ago? Well, that is the difference between the level of detail and sharpness custom eyeglasses provide versus what your current eyeglasses provide.

Sally: “Wow, if that’s true, it’ll be worth it, I guess.”

Optician: “As we go through the measurement process, please let me know if you have any questions. I want you to fully understand each step in this process. The more you understand these measurements the more you will appreciate the value of your new eyeglasses.”

Related ROB Articles

Offer Personalized Lenses as Practice Differentiator

The Optometrist to Dispensary Hand-Off: An Open Dialogue Can Improve the Outcome

Reduce Remakes by Listening to Patients–and Training Staff to Troubleshoot Problems

Jeffrey Rohlf, LDO, is assistant director of clinics at The Ohio State University College of Optometry in Columbus, Ohio. To contact him: JRohlf@optometry.osu.edu.

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