By Michael J. Zucker, OD
Vendor partners, including managed care providers and contact lens and frame manufacturers and distributors, usually claim to value independent ODs. Their actions, however, frequently don’t correspond to their words. Rather than supporting the efforts of the independent practitioner, these companies often create systems that mostly benefit corporate-owned optometry.
It appears that the brains of the profit centers of vision plans are discovering new ways to impoverish the independent eyecare practitioner. The latest ploys of some of these plans use simple logic: Let the eyecare professional examine the patient the plan puts in the examining chairs, but instead of the practitioner sharing in the profits from material sales, the vision plan supplies the materials and then allots a nominal dispensing fee to the practitioner for creating the sale, dispensing the glasses or contact lenses and spending time on any follow-up the patient may need.
Unfortunately, this model makes it difficult for a brick-and-mortar office to survive and aggrandizes the plan for doing very little extra work. These plans want to utilize distributors already in place to accomplish their financial goals. Thankfully, the distributors that work with private optometry are taking the position of not supplying the platforms. If they did, that would inevitably lead to the independent practitioner’s demise.
Some of these plans show no understanding of optometry and have no mercy in even vaguely caring that we support many employees with decent wages, medical benefits and retirement plans.
I hope the manufacturers, distributors and vision plans don’t kill the goose—independent ODs—who laid the golden egg. And that independent optometry doesn’t wind up next to the dodo bird in the land of extinct species.
Vendors who respect independent ODs and understand our needs–rather than undermining us–are vital to our long-term success.
Do you feel most eyecare vendors have the best interests of independent ODs in mind? What is the best way to find vendor partners to work with who will support, rather than undermine, your practice?
Michael J. Zucker, OD, is the owner of Accent on Vision in Tucson, Ariz. To contact him: mzucker8@comcast.net
