Dr. Hornberger’s new office space. The additional room allowed her to increase appointment availability to patients by finally having room to add an associate OD.
Optometry practice expansions that increased access to care & grew profitability.
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By Samantha Hornberger, OD,
and Melissa McCulley, OD
Sept. 18, 2024
When your practice has shown impressive growth for a long time, and you know you can do a lot more for your patients with more space, it’s time to think about an expansion of your office.
Two optometrists who expanded their offices in recent years shared with Review of Optometric Business how they successfully did it.
Both optometrists were honorees of CooperVision’s 2024 Best Practices Program.
Space to Finally Add an Associate OD
Samantha Hornberger, OD
Bright Family Eye Care
West Harrison, Ind.
There came a tipping point in early/mid 2022 when I felt like we had to decide on one of two directions for our practice, as our lease term had about two years remaining.
One path was to stay in the same location with the same amount of space (about 1,400 square feet at that time), the same size staff, and no ability to work two doctors on the same day because of space constraints, or move into a bigger space.
At that point the decision was distilled into two options: stay and be happy with the size of our practice or take a leap and focus the next five years on serious growth. Ultimately, based on where I was in my career, I decided I wasn’t done growing the practice, so the decision was easy.
As an almost nine-year-old practice at the time, we were seeing some of our best growth, over 30 percent in 2022 over the previous year, but knew that to maintain that we needed to move.
The problem was there was no available office space in our immediate area. That changed in spring 2022 as I saw a building for sale about five miles from our current office. It was in our price range, but needed a complete renovation. I thought it was still a worthwhile investment since it was in an area that I thought would present a good growth opportunity without being so far away from our current office as to lose a large percentage of current patients.
We bought and renovated the building, going from 1,400 sq. ft. to 4,400 sq. ft., adding three exam rooms, a larger optical, a finishing lab and a dry eye treatment space. The renovation was extensive and took about 18 months from signing the purchase agreement to moving into our space.
We are now able to serve more patients than we could previously, as well as add additional technologies. Since expanding, we added a second doctor and now have two doctors available a combined 7.5 days per week of appointment availability versus the 3.5-4 days per week previously.
We were also able to invest in intense pulsed light technology (IPL) for our dry eye patients with our new dedicated space for those treatments. In addition, we invested in digital refraction systems in several of the new exam lanes to make the refraction faster and more pleasant for our patients.
There are many expenses that come with expanding to a larger space, including occupancy costs, maintenance costs, new equipment and new staffing and payroll increases. That said, we grew our revenue an additional 25 percent in 2023, and so far in 2024, we are up almost 28 percent year-to-date over last year as an almost 11-year-old practice.
Boosting Gross Profits 20% One Year In
Melissa McCulley, OD
McCulley Optix Gallery
West Fargo, N.D.
I knew it was time for an expansion of our office space when I started working out of the back emergency exit, and we had nowhere for a new employee to put her purse down.
The exterior of Dr. McCulley’s new office. She says the new space allowed her to add services for her patients while impressively growing profitability.
Opening my office as a cold start in 2006 with 1,450 square feet, I felt like we had tons of space. We had one exam lane equipped and only saw a handful of patients for exams.
As we grew, we equipped our second exam room and added more pretest instruments. We were creative with our space over the years, eventually changing out the manager’s office to be the pretesting room and hanging a full-length curtain to hide our manager’s desk behind it.
My practice growth metric wasn’t scientific for my expansion decision, but simply based on the fact that our schedule was 80-90 percent booked for five days per week with one full-time-equivalent OD, and we couldn’t “grow” the business any more until we had more space.
Our key performance indicators had stayed pretty consistent for a couple of years. Demand was there, but we couldn’t add new offerings or services in our old location due to lack of space.
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Our growth really picked up, and in early 2020, I decided we needed a bigger office. I headed off on vacation and told my staff I’d be back in one week and we’d find a new office location. But then COVID-19 hit and the office was closed! The uncertainty of the time really pushed back my efforts to make a move.
A year later when business was booming and I had exhausted all options to move into an existing commercial space, we decided to construct a new building. We chose six lanes for the new office. Currently, we have three equipped and plan to add our fourth lane.
I spent A LOT of time thinking about the office layout and scouring the internet for ideas. I had a Pinterest board with every idea from contact lens trial storage ideas to paint colors. My Pinterest board was my lifeline while designing the new office and was the best way for me to communicate my ideas to our architect.
Our new office has significant natural light, which I highly recommend! Since we designed the entire building, I was able to add Clerestory windows above our tech station in the clinic. It’s nice to know what the weather is doing, even if I am not outside to enjoy it.
With the extra space in our new office, we have room to add new instruments. We added Neurolens to our practice soon after opening the new space. However, this was before the virtual reality headsets were released, so we took ownership of the large NMD2 machine, and fortunately, we had the space to put it in a private, quiet room. We have been a top Neurolens dispensing office ever since we brought it in last year.
Our expansion mostly helped with our optical. In our old office, we only had two dispensing tables and one extra loveseat in our optical. This served as both the waiting room and the optical selling and dispensing floor. We were bumping into each other! Our new office has a separate welcome reception area for guests and our optical has three dispensing stations along with a dispensing bar and sitting area.
The first year after moving into our new facility, our gross profits went up 20 percent and almost every metric improved.
Most notably, our patient exam growth and new patient percentages went up. Our location only moved three miles down the street, but we gained increased visibility. We also are making great relationships with our medical professional neighbors who often send patients our way. Patients consistently remark on how beautiful our new space is. I love coming to work every day!
Here more about how Drs. Hornberger and McCulley profitably expanded their offices space.
>Click HERE to learn more about CooperVision’s Best Practices Awards program>>
This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.
