VEW 2024: A recipe for economic success for eye care practices

Vision Expo West took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, last week, and Michele Andrews, OD, shared her interpretation of keynote speaker Geoff Colvin's formula for economic success in eye care providers. She shares her thoughts on creating value, keeping people first, and differentiating your practice from the competition.

Video transcript

Michele Andrews, OD:

Hi, I'm Dr Michele Andrews with CooperVision. So this evening, we are very excited to have an evening with Geoff Colvin. He is a senior editor at Fortune Magazine, and he's on CBS Radio. So tonight, Geoff is going to be focused on future proofing your business, and he's going to talk about this in three different ways. The first: How do we create unique value? The second: How do we keep people at the center of everything we do? And third: How do we differentiate?

One of the great ways to create value in a practice is through contact lenses. First, let's talk about myopia management. We know that myopia is an epidemic, and we know that modern day lifestyles are not doing kids any favors when it comes to myopia progression and their prescriptions getting higher, and so myopia management is a great way to expand your contact lens patient base and also expand your practice.

You can also think about your contact lens patients when they become presbyopic. We know that the population is aging, and there are amazing new technologies in the marketplace to not only fit people as new wearers for the first time when they become presbyopes, but also continue people who are happily wearing single vision contact lenses, keep them happily wearing contact lenses when presbyopia does kick in.

And finally, contact lenses can just improve your contact lens wearers just overall experience with lenses. When we think about toric lenses, for example, and providing really great vision with toric lenses—you know, it wasn't too long ago, just about 4 or 5 years ago, that only 27% of patients who wore contact lenses wore toric lenses. Knowing that almost upwards of 40% almost 50% of the population has clinically significant astigmatism, we can do more to ensure that our patients who have astigmatism are in the proper lenses for their prescription. Here we are [in] 2024, 35% of patients are now wearing toric lenses. So even within the contact lens practice you already have opportunities to make your patient experience even better.

You know, patients come to the practice because they want to be seen by doctors and their staff. That personal interaction is so critical to their overall eye care experience. So even with all the technology that we hear about and even with all the technology that we'll add to practices and the way we operate, that person-to-person, that interpersonal connection, is so critical. So the way CooperVision is helping you stay connected to the patients in your practice is through our sustainability efforts. CooperVision was the first contact lens manufacturer to introduce net plastic neutrality. What this means is that through our partnership with Plastic Bank, we remove plastic from coastal communities around the world, plastic that may have found its way into the ocean, and the amount of plastic that we remove is equal to the weight of plastic in our contact lenses, in our Clariti, MyDay, Biofinity, and MiSight brands. And to date, CooperVision and Plastic Bank have removed an equal weight of over 360 million plastic bottles from coastal areas. And we'll continue to do so, making people and planet an opportunity and a focus area for your practice.

So the way for practices to continue to distinguish themselves is through continuous innovation. With myopia management, let us help you bring myopia management mainstream so that as many patients in your practice as possible can benefit from that technology. For your patients who are on digital devices, which is probably just about every one of them, MyDay and Biofinity Energys are the perfect lenses for you to offer to your patients to help them while they're using their digital devices, which we know they're not going to give up. And as your patients are aging into presbyopia, new multifocal technology, like the new design of Clariti Multifocal are great options for you to continue to wow your patients and keep them coming back to your practice for what's new.

And of course, there's many ways to innovate within your practice, outside of the contact lens space. Look at your past successes. Take a look at all the things that you've done, and lean into your teams to keep bringing those good ideas forward. You can be successful. We can all be successful, future proofing our business through our people, our innovation and our commitment to our patients.