Is a Telemedicine Solution Right for Your Optical Store?

Is a Telemedicine Solution Right for Your Optical Store?

Is your optical store meeting the needs of your customers? Do they purchase eyewear or do they leave because they don’t have a recent prescription? And before they leave without purchasing anything, do they ask why they can’t get their vision checked right there, right now?

4 Ways Telemedicine Can Work for You

• It’s patient-centered.

Telemedicine provides people with a comprehensive way to purchase eyewear, from the vision exam right through to the selection of frames or contacts. Every owner of an optical store recognizes the frustration customers feel when they cannot purchase a new pair of glasses because they have an outdated prescription. Even though they swear their vision hasn’t changed in the past several years, it would be a disservice to their eye health to ignore the fact they need an exam.

But if you could offer these customers an on-the-spot vision exam using the telemedicine technologies, they can be assured of the right prescription and make their purchase as planned.

• It’s convenient.

“Right now” are words that appeal to every customer. If they are in your optical store, they are looking to make a purchase. If they need a vision exam, “right now” is the perfect thing to say.

And the perfect pairing with these words can be something like the Smart Vision Exam. This autorefractor, made by Smart Vision Labs, is part of a self-guided system that conducts vision exams without the need for an on-site doctor. The technology is cutting edge: advanced wavefront aberrometry that measures vision imperfection. It uses an iPhone camera (making it much smaller than traditional autorefractors) but is as accurate (with a measurement error of one percent) when compared to the gold standard.

When you have technology like this in your optical store, you tell customers that you’re serious about the business of eye care.

• It’s cost-effective.

Eye health is important to everyone but cost factors into many people’s decisions. Although vision insurance was supposed to level the financial playing field, it only seemed to direct patients to network doctors and facilities without giving them real cost-saving benefits.

Telemedicine changes that. When you offer technology for vision exams, you put the power of choice back into the patient’s hands. This is not only an affordable way to check vision; it’s a way to save money by putting dollars toward a convenient and accurate vision test instead of toward insurance that limits options.

• It’s worth it.

Yes, telemedicine is worth the time it takes for you to learn the system (very easy, really) and the financial startup costs. Yet, when you have an optical store, the entire profit and loss spreadsheet has another dimension.

It all goes back to the first reason on this list about being patient centered. Optical stores have a mandate from their customers. Eyewear should be available and affordable, that’s a given. But with the use of telemedicine to provide vision exams, you position your business as an educator about the larger issue of eye health.

When people know that your optical store offers a convenient and cost-effective way to have their vision checked, they will know that it’s worth coming to your business for their eyewear purchases.

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