A recruitment drive has started at the OutsideClinic with the domiciliary provider looking to employ 50 additional optometrists over the next 12 months.
OutsideClinic currently employed 75 optometrists, which meant it would grow its workforce by two-thirds to 125 to meet a growing demand for its services.
Richard Gibson, managing director at OutsideClinic, told Optician: ‘What we’ve seen is a 50% increase on the number of patients that are requiring our service. That has been fuelled mainly by the marketing changes that we’ve made.’
Since the domiciliary provider was acquired in November last year by Optimism Health Group, a new marketing strategy has resulted in a huge growth in patients seeking its services.
Gibson explained the pandemic had shifted perceptions of receiving eye care services at home, which resulted in more growth for the company.
In response, OutsideClinic launched the biggest recruitment campaign in its 30-year history with videos created in support that explained why domiciliary was a rewarding career path, as well as the benefits of flexibility and use of industry-leading technology.
Gibson said demand was high enough among patients to be able to employ all 50 at once but the realities of recruiting in the optical industry, especially during Covid-19, meant it would be rolled out over the year with around four optometrists joining every month.
‘OutsideClinic primarily targets over-65s and a lot more patients are wanting services at home. Where they may have struggled to get to the high street before, they don’t want to anymore. A 50% rise over the last six months is massive. We see 100,000 patients a year at the moment but we’re seeing that growth increase.
‘With the projections forecasting that people over the age of 65 will account for almost a quarter of the UK population by 2038, and the home healthcare market is expected to grow by 6.4% from 2019 to 2026, our aim is to grow the business to £100m turnover in five years and we’re well on track. In this current year, we’re expecting to do £30m turnover, which is the first time that we’ve ever done that in our history. If that curve continues, we’ll be on track,’ Gibson explained.
He added that OutsideClinic also provided hearing services and would like to add to its portfolio in the coming years. ‘We’re really excited about the challenges going forward. It’s going to be very interesting over the next four to five years. We’re expecting all of our growth to be organic.’
Supply and demand
The launch of a recruitment drive during a pandemic naturally presented challenges and Gibson said the market was extremely tough and competitive. If these ambitious targets were to be achieved, challenges would have to be overcome.
‘There’s a lot of opticians who are looking for optometrists because there are patients who haven’t been seen yet. Fortunately, we’ve done very well with the salaries and the benefits that we offer and are doing extremely well recruiting, but there’s a huge demand for opticians at the moment,’ he said.
Gibson explained that difficulties finding optometrists in the usual hard-to-recruit regions, such as Devon, Cornwall and Norfolk, had increased.
To overcome this challenge, OutsideClinic created relocation packages and offered higher salaries in those areas, plus it communicated with universities to put domiciliary care at the forefront of students’ thoughts.
Gibson was confident that OutsideClinic’s growth plans would be achieved because patients need care and increasingly want it delivered at their convenience. He said: ‘There is a huge demand among older people. We’re all living longer with multiple medical conditions. We know that community care is so important for the government’s target. They do not want people going into nursing homes or residential homes very early because it costs a lot of money. Keeping people independent in their own home is so important and that will just keep on fuelling the needs for domiciliary companies.
‘We’ve launched a recruitment drive but it is all about the customers or the patients. It’s important that a patient is seen also as a customer because they have the right to demand the best quality service and that’s what we intend always to give.’
