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Here is the scenario. One doctor can own a Wal-Mart contract (or a Sam’s Club contract for that manner) for more than one location at the same time. Wal-Mart usually decides to do this if the locations are struggling with volume and/or having a hard time finding someone to fill the location.

Can the doctor physically be at two places at once or work eight days a week? No, so he hires someone. Let’s call the multi-contract owner Dr. Fingers and the two doctors who work for the contract owner we’ll call Drs. Desperate and Disgruntled. Wal-Mart needs three locations filled: Bountiful, Ghetto, and Rough Diamond.

So let’s say Dr. Fingers works Bountiful and hires Dr. Desperate at the Ghetto location and Dr. Disgruntled at Rough Diamond. The contract is similar to “I’ll pay you 70% of your gross receipts.” Dr. Desperate says fine because she just needs a job and doesn’t care about a long term commitment because she’s willing to relocate in a moments notice. Dr. Disgruntled is in a bind because he really wants to live in the city of Rough Diamond forever, but he doesn’t want to pay Dr. Fingers 30% of his gross receipts, especially when he finds out that Dr. Fingers is only paying Wal-Mart 10% or if the contract is some ridiculously low flat fee not even based on receipts.

So what happens? Usually Dr. Disgruntled will leave and try to find his next best ideal location. Dr. Fingers will probably have to funnel in and out doctors every couple years. The vision centers stagnate and never grow because the doctors who work there have no vested interest in growing the practice since they know they won’t be there long term since Dr. Fingers takes so much of their money.

I believe that it is a mistake for Wal-Mart to give any doctor a contract for more than one location just so he can suck cash from other doctors for no reason other than, “Hey, I own the contract.”

Now, I can see how some of you might say, “But what if you had a multi-doctor parnership share multiple locations equitably?” Well, you’d still have the problem of the last location not growing because the doctors rotate every day, and then which of the doctor partners would volunteer to work at the last location on its poor performing days?

It’s better for the vision centers, the doctors, and even the community to have each doctor own the contract for the vision center that they work in.

“But what about vacation days?” you say. Well, wouldn’t it be cool if each area could have it own full time fill-in person? Maybe the fill in person could always keep 100% of his receipts and not have to pay rent to subsidize the days when there isn’t an opportunity to work? I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud here. Or you can probably find a private practice doctor who needs supplemental income to work for you.

“But our store needs someone, and we can’t find anyone, so thank Heaven for Dr. Fingers,” you say. Well, that’s a short term solution that defeats you in the long run. None of your sub-contracted doctors would be motivated to grow the practice (an thus increase vision center sales) like a contracted doctor would. This scenario will just stagnate you at mediocrity. If you must hire Doctor Fingers, I think the terms should explicitly say that Wal-Mart has the option to not renew Dr. Fingers contract at the satellite location if they can find a permanent doctor when the contract expires in three years. I don’t care if Dr. Fingers is taking a “risk.” He has three years to recoup his “risk.” Take it or leave it, Fingers.

But let me restate. Multi-location contracts for a lone doctor who invariably gets greedy and pockets cash for not doing any work: BAD. Allowing a doctor to own the contract where he actually works in order to change it from slow to crazy-busy: GOOD.

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Ouch. This hurts.
It makes me want to cry.
But seriously, didn’t I say that optometrists have a PR problem? Sure, you could argue the cartoon itself is fun and games, but the reader comments about it are not.

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Brian Rowley was in the class above me in optometry school, and I just saw him at the UOA Meeting. It seems he is in the newspaper as a karmic baseball fan.

He also was interviewed for KSL TV, and they showed it on SportsBeat Sunday which you can view completely here on their SportsBeat iCast. On Saturday they showed this teaser:

I’d say that’s a pretty good practice builder for an up and coming optometrist. At the Park City meeting, he told me that his practice will soon need a new building with more exam lanes. Dr. Rowley had to work commercial optometry for a while before taking over his current thriving practice. So you see, optometry students, it is possible to make a successful solo private practice…if you are willing to roll the dice, take the gamble, spin the wheel, bet the farm, etc.

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I always wanted to do a podcast, but I’ve never gotten around to it because who wants to hear me ramble? I can say things more succinctly by writing them. I think a podcast is interesting when it’s a small group discussion or an interview with interesting people. I’ve never gotten around to recording either scenario, so I never published a podcast…until now.

In a previous post I linked to a YouTube snippet of the CEO of 1-800 CONTACTS, Jonathan Coon, giving a speech to Wal-Mart optometrists. Posting the entire video from the DVD would take too much bandwidth, but I managed to scrape the audio to share with you. So it’s not really my podcast, but it is a step in the right direction.

Again, if I get a legal letter from 1-800 or Wal-Mart demanding that I remove the content, I will of course comply; however, they did send this DVD to every Wal-Mart optometrist, and some of those optometrists also work in private practice settings. Also, this presentation defends 1-800 CONTACTS and Wal-Mart’s partnership better than anything I’ve heard. So, I think you will agree that every optometrist who is interested should listen to this talk (or watch it if you can borrow it from your nearest Wal-Mart Vision Center).

Enjoy. (Click the player below or download manually or subscribe to it in iTunes or subscribe to Optoblog’s site feed or podcast feed to automatically get it in your favorite podcatcher.)

 

 1-800 CONTACTS and WAL-MART DVD audio [46:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (103)

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The Utah Optometric Association held their annual meeting in Park City at the Canyons Resort last week. The whole thing was a four day meeting, Thursday-Sunday, which is puzzling since the total CE hours offered was a mere twenty-three. The first two days only offered four hours and the last two days offered seven and then eight.

So why did the first two days only offer four hours? Well, of course you have to have the golf tournament which I overheard the same people win every year so they have to change the scoring rules to give others a chance. Then there’s all the luncheons, vendor fairs, dinners, parties, receptions, and association business meetings that take up more time.

Personally, I wish they would do all that other stuff on one day so that I could skip that day and still get all the CEs I need in just 2-3 days instead of four. I especially dislike having to go to CE on Sunday when I should be going to church instead. I mean, we live in Utah for Heaven’s sake! More than half the optometrists at the meeting are LDS church goers who normally wouldn’t work on Sundays, so you’d think someone could change the schedule to allow for more CE on Friday and Saturday and then I could skip out on the partying on Thursday and Sunday.

The Canyons is a nice resort. In the winter, it looks like you could ski out of your hotel onto the lift. But hey, all resorts in Park City are nice. The Canyons staff took good care of the conference room set-up, and there was plenty of pop, water, food, and hot chocolate.

Park City is great, but May is the off season. It’s neither winter nor summer, so you can’t ski and you can’t ride the alpine slide. Part of me would like to see the conference done in either the summer or winter when a lot more is available for the family to do; however, that would only serve to increase the rates of the convention and its hotel stay, so maybe it’s just fine in late May.

Really, it’s a great meeting, but the time lost in an extra day away from the office and the whole disrupting my Sunday routine has me thinking I might go to the NROC, SECO or AAO next time.

I’m sure I’ll still go to the UOA Park City conference occasionally in the future because it’s great to talk with other O.D.s in the state, but I’m never going to stay for a Sunday CE lecture again.

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It is interesting that some private practice docs can’t seem to tell the difference between Kleenex and Puffs- I mean 1-800Contacts and other retailers of soft contact lenses. This article was written in October 2006, but certain items are worth repeating in 2008:

…optometrist Wiley Curtis, of Arlington, Texas, represented the AOA’s position, tempered by his own experience. “Over the course of this year, I have tracked 18 contact lens orders placed with 1-800 Contacts,” he says. “I am saddened to report that the first 17 orders were all filled by the company without any verification contact with my office, in apparent violation of the FCLCA.”

After the hearing, 1-800 Contacts looked into this accusation. “Our records from the last 12 months to this doctor’s office show 192 phone calls, three faxes and eight total hours on the phone with his staff,” says Kevin McCallum, 1-800 Contacts’ senior vice president of marketing and operations. “We received 117 orders from this doctor’s patients. All 117 orders received a successful verification request.”

This actually happened while the congress was hearing testimony about the FCLCA. Apparent AOA stooge, Dr. Curtis, alleged that 1800Contacts broke the law, so the 1-800Contacts team stayed up all night to research, and the next day at the hearings they provided evidence to the contrary.

I only first heard about this event when I listened to Jonathan C. Coon, CEO of 1-800 CONTACTS, speak to all the Wal-Mart Optometrists on April 27th at our all-travel-and-expenses-paid meeting in Nashville, TN. He had given pretty much the same speech on a DVD sent to all Wal-Mart vision centers earlier this year after the announcement of Wal-Mart and 1-800’s alliance. Here is a significant clip. Please watch.

I wish everyone could see the entire half hour speech, but the above video clip combined with the aove AOA-is-stupid story show why optometrists blindly dislike 1-800 Contacts. I hated 1-800 blindly because that is what the organized optometrist establishment taught me to do. After learning the facts, there is no reason for any optometrist to dislike 1-800, unless that optometrist also hates all their other competitors. I don’t because I’m friends with most of the other optometrists in town and 1-800 is making my life easier now.

For these reasons, I would like to officially and publicly retract the negative comments I made about 1-800 Contacts in this previous post. It was a knee jerk response conditioned by organized optometry, for which I am ashamed.

I admire Mr. Coon and his core team for everything they’ve done to become a very successful business. I think that private practice optometrists, like the above Dr. Curtis, are just jealous. Incidentally, Mr. Coon in his speech said that after presenting the facts about Dr. Curtis’s patient orders to 1-800 Contacts, 1-800 asked him and the AOA to stop making wrongful [slanderous, defaming] accusations or privide their evidence. He has yet to bring evidence or retract his statements.

Don’t be blinded, everybody. Go to your nearest Wal-Mart Vision Center and ask to watch the 1-800 Contacts DVD.

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I’ve mentioned Jay Parkinson, M.D. before, and in fact, he has left a comment on this blog before.

Now he is transitioning into kind of a franchise system.

When we think of traveling outside the office, its usually just to do screenings at the old folks home, but I’m not talking about that. What if the industry made available light, portable and cost-effective exam equipment in a nice kit? What if you kept your Wal-Mart job 4 days a week but provide home eyecare one day a week? Would you want to provide home eyecare full-time?

I’m just thinking out loud here. Does anyone think there is a way optometrists can deliver home eyecare? If we can, should we?

**Update: I saw in Review of Optometry’s edition of Women in Optometry June 2008, that Dr. Tamara Hill-Bennett, O.D. makes house calls 80% of her practice. Since I couldn’t find a link to the article, here is a copy (PDF, 490 KB).

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So I found out that I didn’t have to apply with 1800’s referral network, ProNet, for my practice located inside a Wal-Mart vision center because I’m already in the system because of the alliance between 1800Contacts and Wal-Mart. You won’t believe how awesome this is. First of all, no more telephone calls. It’s all fax now. Huge time saver for the opticians who need to keep busy helping my patients get checked out so they can pay my every-day-low-price exam fee.

And then today, 1800Contacts had a customer on the phone whose prescription expired, so they called my Wal-Mart vision center, and the customer was patched through to talk to an optician. The patient scheduled an exam for Saturday. How sweet is that?!!

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So when I first announced that I was going to shift the focus of this blog to be pro Wal-Mart and tell people about my experiences in this setting (which I will someday get around to), I was flooded with spiteful comments. The first thing one commenter, “John Smith,” did was to try and dig up dirt on me and report me to the Utah optometric board.

On my VisionHealth EyeCare practice website, he saw that I linked to Wal-Mart.com’s contact lens sales section. He (mistakenly) believes this to be in violation of Utah law and (if he can be believed) filed a complaint to the board.

Let me quote the allegation that “John Smith” made:

In the state of Utah, optometrists are strictly prohibited from marketing or advertising for the mercantile establishment. This includes websites.

Now, I don’t know how they do things in Virginia, Ru-I mean “John Smith,” but here in Utah we have no such rule. I could see such crazy rules coming out of communist states like California or even psychotic-optometry-rule states like Nevada, but not in a freedom-loving, gun-and-God-clinging state.

Another commenter decided to sell us on 1800optometrist, which got me to thinking that hey, I’m providing those links to Wal-Mart.com for free. Why not annoy R-I mean “John Smith” even more and potentially make some cash at the same time by linking to 1800 Contacts!?!

It was simple. I found out about it while reading at 1800’s website, registered, and voila’, I have cool links on my practice website for patients to conveniently order contacts and save money while doing it. If they buy stuff, then 1800’s ad manager sends me a check to say thanks for the referral. While I was browsing 1800contacts, I also registered for ProNet so they will send me referrals when someone’s Rx expires.

Here’s what the ads look like (and if you are by chance a non-optometrist reading this article, please click on this link the next time you need to reorder contacts):

So, if you are like “John Smith” and think that I am caught in a Link Gate scandal, then here is the website for Utah DOPL’s complaint department. But believe me that I’ve searched all the documents found online with the Utah DOPL, and John Doe’s alleged Utah rule is made up out of the same magical stuff that new grads grab onto if they want to start their own solo private practice: wishful thinking.

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