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CooperVision’s newest lens, the Biofinity, is now available at Wal-Mart. They’re selling it for something like $49.87 (it’s a one month lens).
I guess my private practice is no longer the exclusive provider of Biofinity in the Cache Valley area.

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Wal-Mart recently announced in a letter that they are “excited to announce a long term alliance between Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club and 1-800 CONTACTS..”

May Heaven help us, because 1-800 sure isn’t going to. I promptly wrote the following E-mail to Dr. Patel, Wal-Mart’s Director of Professional Relations:

Dr. Patel,
I would advise against any kind of alliance with 1-800 CONTACTS. You’re not the first one to try. Standard Optical, a Utah-based optical chain, aligned with this Utah-based contact lens reseller for a while, and it didn’t last long. You should talk with those in the know about why it didn’t work out.

1-800 is also militant about teaching the general public to force the doctor to make decisions not in their best interest. Everyone inside our industry acknowledges that yearly eye exams are important, but 1800’s own website indoctrinates consumers to mandate to their doctor that prescriptions should expire at the two year mark OR LATER. (see: http://www.1800contacts.com/docAndRx/DocRx-release-1.shtml ). As a Utah eye doctor, I already suffer with practicing in the only state in the nation with a minimum 2-year contact lens expiration date- thanks to 1800’s lobbying power in our Utah legislature.

I had a patient last year, whom if her prescription hadn’t expired, she wouldn’t have come back in to see me for her yearly exam. If she wouldn’t have had her yearly exam, I wouldn’t have noticed an FDT screening visual field defect and reduced vision in one eye that wasn’t there the previous 2 yearly exams. If I wouldn’t have seen her, I couldn’t have referred her to the ophthalmologist who referred her for imaging which found the diagnosis of a brain tumor. A yearly eye exam saved her life, and under 1800’s reign, we are sure to miss these kinds of cases in the future.

If your only goal is to cut costs related to online sales at walmart.com, why not use 1800 as a nameless, behind the scenes
subcontractor? Giving them the limelight is the wrong move for Wal-Mart. An alliance with 1800 disgraces our reputation.

Also, I’ll quote from your FAQ (http://www.walmartod.com/clients/1814/docs/FAQ_Alliance.pdf): “Consumers in that same survey specifically cited cost and “purchasing them is inconvenient” as reasons for over-wearing their lenses.” Wal-Mart boasts about how something like 50% of a town’s population visit their store in any given week. How is stopping by the vision center on their bi-weekly pilgrimage inconvenient? What they meant to say is expensive or don’t have enough money. They expect to buy a box per eye and stretch it as long as possible. The real problem is that people expect a year supply of contacts to be less expensive than glasses just because you throw them away, and most also expect them to be a replacement for, not in addition to, glasses. Change those two perceptions, and you’ll increase your contact lens sales without help from the enemy of 1800 CONTACTS.

Please see my previous blog posts about 1800:
http://www.optoblog.com/2007/10/09/check-yearly-live-another-year/
http://www.optoblog.com/2007/07/30/patients-say-the-funniest-things/
http://www.optoblog.com/2007/03/19/1-800-eat-crap-and-die/

Sincerely,
David Langford, O.D.

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Here’s another example of why everyone should consider getting a yearly eye exam despite what Canadian studies say. A college student came in for a routine eye exam to get more contacts since the last doctor made her contact prescription expire only after a year. Everything seemed normal except that this year she didn’t pass the FDT screening field with one eye and that same eye had 20/30 vision. The ONH looked a little pale and both were elevated.

If I was still in Indian Health Service, I could have handled this myself- ordering all kinds of fun tests. But what I’ve learned out in the private sector is that insurance companies HATE it when optometrists order tests. Patients get denial letters on labs. Forget about imaging. Besides, I was having a train wreck day, so I just punted to the ophthalmologist.

Turns out that an MRI ordered by the OMD diagnosed a brain tumor that would have killed her if allowed to fester. I know that because she stopped by last week on a day that I wasn’t there to say thank you. When I heard that, I felt ashamed. I should have been the one to piece together the information and order the scans and have the burden to tell her the bad news.

But regardless of my personal shame, the patient is now okay. She is yet another shining example of why Utah state law should not mandate to me that I have to make prescriptions good for two years. I saw her chart from previous years. No VF defects, 20/20 vision in both eyes- no indication that the next year she would be diagnosed with brain cancer.

Hey 1-800 and your lobbiests! Who knows how many people you will kill or blind because you force by law that every eye doctor in the state of Utah has to make their Rx’s for 2 years.

So everyone: check yearly, see clearly, live longer.

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[Edit: For some reason, this is the most popular page on my site thanks to people searching the internet for mentions of Biofinity. Please be sure to read my other article entitled There is No Biofinity Conspiracy.]

I posted an entry on my practice website about the Biofinity lens. Within less than 2 hours, I got the following comment in the comment moderation cue:

Author : John Bird (IP: ***.**.**.** , [URL removed to protect the innocent])
E-mail : jbird@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=***.**.**.**
Comment:
I have tried Biofinity and quickly went back to Oasys. Oasys is a more comfortable lens, and it doesn’t have the problems with protein build up that Biofinity does.

Before approving the comment, I sent the following e-mail to “John Bird”:

Mr. Bird,
I’m skeptical of your comment. Tell me who you are, how you know the
phrase “protein build up” and how you happened upon my article shortly
after it was posted, and then I’ll think about approving it for my
patients to see.

Then I recieved word from AOL that the message couldn’t be delivered:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

jbird@aol.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13): 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND

So, someone made up a fake name and e-mail address and tried to push people away from Biofinity to Acuvue Oasys. The IP address links the poster to a company named ************, a “***** ******* *** ****** ******* firm.” He could be just a random employee of a big company in New York who happens to subscribe to content from the website of a small optometrist office in Utah.

Or…what do you think?

And is there any truth to Biofinity getting deposit build up? From what I’ve read the Aquaform material is supposed to resist deposits.

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