Professional fees

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A professional fee-based pricing plan could be a way for interested practices to address concerns such as the above and provide practices with an opportunity to grow their contact lens and spectacle business.

Following changes to the Opticians Act in June 2005 many new businesses began to supply contact lenses, including supermarkets and internet-based companies. As these businesses generally rely on high volume sales, their model allows them to work with extremely low, often single-digit, profit margins. This has been seen as a threat by some traditional optical practices which continue to subsidise clinical care by charging relatively high profit margins for both contact lenses and spectacles. Many optometrists and contact lens opticians would prefer to charge a realistic fee for the service and professional care they provide than sell product to subsidise their services. However, the traditional optical practice pricing model is not based on the actual cost of providing professional care.