Kevin, M.D. says that
The retail clinic era is over, and … pharmacy-based clinics are doomed to fail.
Corporations are finding out what primary care doctors already know: it’s hard to make money only doing office visits.
Ophthalmologists make bank doing procedures. I guess the problem with the retail medical clinic is that the doctor is paid so much. I guess optical shops are lucky that optometrists aren’t as high up on the whole pay scale totem pole.
I have to wonder about the optometric profession, though. The student loan debt percentage delta outpaces optometrist’s pre-tax net percentage delta. How much longer will anybody want to apply for optometry school?
I guess we need Obama to bailout the optometry schools. Socialized medicine, here we come. Thanks for reading, comrades.
Optometry, as usual, continues to advance the profession on one hand, through legislation that allows us to practice to the fulle extent of our training — and on the other hand, continues to did itself into a low fee for service existence. How?? For as long as I’ve practiced as an O.D. there have been a never quest to provide either free and/or very low priced eye exams, exam fee included with the price of glasses — this has been going on for 25 years atleast. The public perceives and then interprets this as Optometrists having no value. The profession has created this for itself. And now, unbelievably, the American Optometric Association (AOA) now recommends that, through the INFANTSEE program, that Optometrists peform FREE eye exams on all infants – WHETHER THEY HAVE INSURANCE OR NOT. This bolsters public opinion that Optometrists have no value. Yes, we all agree that infants require their first eye exam before 18 months old to check for all kinds of problems — but for FREE?? EVEN IF THEY HAVE INSURANCE !! I’m sure the CEO’s for major medical insurance companies and vision care plans are pocketing the money that was set aside for these infant exams and laughing at O.D,’s all the way to the bank. Also amazing, but not surprising is that thousands of OD’s have jumped on the FREE
infant exam train and think this is a good thing. Sure we come off as nice caring doctors when we do FREE infant exams — REAL nice guys. Then if the parent of the infant needs an exam and the regular exam fee is too high for them (remember, they know they can get it cheaper at Walmart) OR if the OD doesn’t take their insurance, they’ll be visiting some other OD office and think nothing of it. I would love to do FREE exams on all infants, as long as the AOA wants to help pay my rent, office bills, employee salaries, my kids college education etc.
Yes, as usual , Optometry continues to screw itself – no sign of letting up as far as I can tell.