Nov. 18, 2015
The Vision Council’s latest VisionWatch report reflects a 6.3 percent gain in dollar sales for the 12 months ending September 2015, for the U.S. vision care market to reach sales $39.4 billion. All segments, including Rx lenses, frames, exams, contact lenses, plano sunglasses, refractive surgery and over the counter (OTC) readers saw gains for the period.
There are a couple of points to take from the Vision Council’s latest VisionWatch report.
First, look at how much revenue filmed entertainment took in last year in North America. It was $35.82 billion dollars. Compare that with the $39.4 billion dollars that the U.S. vision care market collected for the 12 months ending September 2015. It’s easy to see that the U.S. vision care market is larger than filmed entertainment for North America. That’s an amazing fact to get your mind around.
The second point to take from the Vision Council’s latest VisionWatch report is that the U.S. vision care market had a 6.3 percent gain in dollar sales for the 12 months ending in September 2015. What was your gain in dollar sales? Did you do better than 6.3 percent or less? If your practice gross revenue was $687,000 in 2014, then a 6.3 percent gain would mean that your 2015 revenue was $730,281.
What are you going to do with the gain? That’s $43,281 increase from the 2014 revenue. You can spend that a lot of ways. Here are three steps to make the best use of that gain.
STEP 1: Consider the Big Picture
Before you spend the money, let’s first take a look at the practice by asking the most important question: What are your practice written goals for the next three years? Less than 20 percent of practices have a written three-year plan for the practice. Practices with written plans achieve more than practices without a written plan, so what is your written plan? * Don’t just regret that you don’t have a written plan, make one!
STEP 2: Identify the specific strategies and tactics to achieve the goals identified in STEP 1.
Specifically look at your strategies and tactics for these seven key areas:
1) Your exit strategy (what is the next step you need to take)
2) Working smarter, not harder
3) Improved practice efficiencies
4) Increased number of patient visits
5) Increasing your capture rate
6) Increasing your average per-patient revenue
7) Integration into the narrowed networks of the ACA
STEP 3: Calculate your ROI
Before any purchase of space, equipment or people, or any expansion of hours, you should calculate the return on investment. Identify how the purchase will either add to the gross revenue of the practice, or decrease the expenses of the practice, or both. Without this calculation, you are not using the science of business to help you run your practice efficiently.
Taking these three steps gives you control over your practice. You are driving it in the direction you want to go, rather than just letting random chaos control your practice.
Take these three steps today to most effectively prepare for next year.
