Shipping contact lenses directly to patients helps practices grow

ABB Optical Group shared data indicating that eye care practices that ship soft contact lenses directly to patients outpace the national average for dollar growth.

Direct-to-patient shipments were also found to be seven times less likely to be returned, according to a press release from the company.

The national average for direct-to-patient dollar share was 25%, and the national average for dollar growth in 2017 was 7.2%, according to the release. However, practices with more than 45% direct-to-patient dollar share grew 8.6% year-over-year, and those with less than 10% grew at 6.3%.

“We are seeing more and more independent eye care professionals are choosing patient-direct shipments as a means of competing on convenience with online retailers, instead of asking patients to make return office visits to get their lenses,” Aaron See, ABB’s vice president of marketing, said in the release.

The company also reported that more than one-third of direct-to-patient shipments are daily disposables, and more than one-quarter of direct-to-patient shipments are torics.

“Overall in 2017, daily disposables were up nearly 19%, and torics [were] up nearly 10%,” See added. “We predict that we’ll continue to see growth in both categories, especially in direct-to-patient sales.”

The company noted that this analysis was based on 2017 sales data from about 11,000 eye care offices representing nearly 31% of total contact lens wholesale dollars in the U.S.