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KINGWOOD, Texas—With activity paused across many of its business programs this spring, Vision Source executives worked diligently to review the progress of its Vision Source Next initiative and to put in place new ideas and tactics that position Next as an attractive option for independent and new ODs who want to provide eyecare via an independent practice setting.
Vision Source Next, which was launched in May 2018, is a “professional advancement program [designed to shape] the future of independent optometry by providing a path to start, buy or work in private practice.” Overall, Vision Source, a franchisor, is the largest network of OD practices in the U.S., with about 3,200 locations.
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“The COVID situation has really created a bit of a pause moment for Vision Source Next,” chief medical officer Amir Khoshnevis, OD, said. “But we’ve worked throughout the pandemic to make sure that the program has more of a robust offering coming out [of this], as we took advantage of the opportunity to ‘pause’ and to rethink and strategically deploy new strategies. It’s a never-ending process of trying to make sure that we offer sustainable programs for private practice.”
With the planning accomplished this spring, Vision Source has now established Vision Source Next around a group of four “buckets” for independent ODs to utilize. These include financing opportunities that would enable ODs already in private practice to expand and/or new ODs to open their first practice location under the Vision Source umbrella.
The first bucket is all about working to continue building the community of private practitioners, which includes students and new graduates, Khoshnevis said. This is centered about a portal known as the “Vision Source Next Community,” which has been extremely successful in engaging students, he said. About 2,500 students have signed up on the portal as a way to connect with the 3,200 Vision Source locations and practitioners who are looking for either associates or business partners.
“Our goal in that program has been to accelerate not only the path between a new grad or an interested party and the optometrists in our network who are asking for associate help, but to help our doctors with their practice growth strategy,” he said. “We believe the rate-limiting step for growth for many of our practitioners is having an associate who can drive the patient-volume growth. And we also want our doctors to be able to transition more into a CEO mentality as opposed to just seeing patients day in and day out, if we can.”
The second bucket in the Next program focuses on continuing and expanding Vision Source’s relationship with young practitioners who have expressed interest in starting their own first-time practice. This is called the “warm start” program for young ODs, and its objective is to give a practitioner “a running start as opposed to a slow crawl” on the opening of their new business, Khoshnevis said.
This program can help a start-up practice reach profitability in close to 14 months, which cuts the typical path to profitability in about half, Khoshnevis said. This bucket of the Next program had about 40 start-up practitioners participating as 2019 came to a close and Vision Source expects 40 to 50 new practices per year will take advantage of this start-up program. (This may be moderated by the coronavirus pandemic this year.)
“We have aspirations and we are on pace to do 40 to 50 [start-ups] per year,” general manager Jeff Duncan noted. “Of course, this year is an exception. But we don’t think coming out of the pandemic that the appetite or the desire among young ODs to start a private practice is going to drastically change once we get back to what we will call normalcy.”
Bucket three of the program is the Vision Source Next fund, which provides an opportunity for Vision Source doctors to expand their own practice or to acquire an existing independent practice location. This also is a way in which Vision Source can move to perpetuate private practice by “enabling a practitioner to buy an existing Vision Source practice or a practice beyond Vision Source to bring into the fold,” Khoshnevis said. “The goal is to continue to invest in the perpetuation and growth of private practice.”
While some of the components of this program are still being developed, the important thing to note, Duncan said, “is that the practitioner has ownership of the practice.” Vision Source is not buying practices, but may help facilitate a transaction and to work toward fair-market rates for both buyer and seller.
The fourth bucket is a broader initiative that aims to balance patient care with business management, Khoshnevis said. It also tries to address ways in which Vision Source can deliver value at the practice level for the remaining [Vision Source] practitioners who are happy, and who are thriving and growing. One way is to make strategic investments in expert resources. This could be collaboration with partners in industry or even working with some of Vision Source’s leading supplier partners.