Buyer Comparison

So let’s start by looking at a patient who just came in to our practice for their annual eye exam. This patient decides that she wants to take her prescription to order online. Aside from educating her, we let her go, we give her her prescription. We receive a total reimbursement of $40. Keep in mind, our chair cost of $120. When comparing our exam reimbursement to our chair cost, we just lost $80. Or we need to make that up with our next patient.

Now, let’s say our next patient comes in for her annual eye exam. She orders a basic single vision lens, in polycarbonate, with a lower quality anti-reflective coating, because she wants to keep her out-of-pocket cost as low as possible and only really wants what her insurance will cover. As a reminder, the frame reimbursement we are using is based on an average frame reimbursement of $55. When you calculate that, well, now we are just shy of reaching our chair cost or just over it, depending on whether or not the patient had VSP signature or VSP choice.

And last, as we see our next patient, the doctor recommends a digital single vision lens with a high-quality anti-reflective coating in a trivex material. For the purpose of this example, I’ll use the Unity Digital with the Techshield AR and in just a few we will get into comparing the reimbursement based on other brands. As we have enhanced our patient’s vision with the products the doctor recommended, compared to giving the patient just what the insurance covers, we also begin to see a higher reimbursement.