Physics haven't changed; this is all about the business environment. Must we bow to those who would cheapen (in the several senses) our world?Originally Posted by Barry Santini
Physics haven't changed; this is all about the business environment. Must we bow to those who would cheapen (in the several senses) our world?
Physics haven't changed; this is all about the business environment...............
You are correct...............physics have not changed, with the exceptions of newer technologies.
You will have to adapt to a changing business environment. Business has no mercy.
Take scraps and enable non-professionals to do your job? No thanks. That's NOT the answer.
Remember, the F-ers slander us at every turn. On their websites. In the legislative bodies. Scandalous lies. Read this clueless poltical hack: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...ushpmg00000009
Oh, but we're going to bend over and spread 'em?
That's the key to the future?
That's "adapting"?
No, that's being a prison-house biyatch.
That's saying "If we're going to be raped, we might as well lie back and enjoy it. Change is good."
Losers.
Last edited by drk; 04-29-2017 at 02:15 PM.
And the newer tech still doesn't change anything except the toolbox we have to manage the side effects of vision correction. The finer the tools, the more expertise is required to get the benefits they provide.
[QUOTE=finefocus;535839]And the newer tech still doesn't change anything except the toolbox we have to manage the side effects of vision correction. The finer the tools, the more expertise is required to get the benefits they provide.[/QUOT
Please excuse me for responding to my own post. Reading it, I realize that the same technical advances that enable professionals to increasingly improve vision enable remote-DIY-onliners to provide "close enough" experiences like we thought were hot stuff several years ago. Since modern designs (like Coast doesn't do) are more accommodating (optical joke), bad dispensing sneaks by among those whose criterion is "value". I leave out the !!! important !!! benefit of that simple thing, a competent professional adjustment which bridges the gap between the objective and the subjective facets of vision. Maybe it's true, and Barry is right, that we who think that professionalism is crucial have the same kind of myopia (not even a real joke) that coal miners have: A robot will never have our job.
Excellent rebuttal of "standards schmandards": the "accumulated slop" potential. Patient margin of error + test margin of error + Dr. margin for error + lab margin of error + dispenser margin for error can get pretty additive in theory. Hey, angels/pinheads, right?
................being a professional, change your way of charging for the goods
................being a professional, change your way of charging for the goods you sell.
If change is good, then do it and match the competition, but do not bundle your services into one big charge.
Itemize your services, and charge for them separately so you can come to a similar end result as your present way of doing it.
If you feel somebody might just be price shopping, give him/her itemized prices and let him/her choose what they
want or need.
Exactly. If we're not there to hold the line against additive error, why does anyone even need us at all? Which brings us to "adapting to the new world..."
We spend a lot of time talking from a false supposition that 'the market' is a monolith. It's not. The eyewear market has two poles: "old-fashioned quality" and "innovative distribution on the cheap." Why do we think one pole of this market affects the other? It just doesn't. There isn't a mass of the eyewear market clustered around the midpoint here--and there is no utility in trying to anticipate where some abstract midpoint is or will be. Consumers continue to pick a pole...and so providers can as well. [One could argue that docs sucked into the insurance quagmire are "in the middle." I say those patients eventually spit back out to one pole or the other--they don't gravitate to stay where they are. Sticking on the insurance track means Insurance will continue dragging them to the bottom pole. Focusing on the better product lines and better employee training will pull them up.]
The demand for quality hasn't gone anywhere. It's strong, and they Demand simplicity. One-stop shopping. One bill for their specs. They know I'm motivated to get it right the first time. Properly selling a good product that works means I don't bleed away my profit on after-sale hassles. So if I take this bad advise here and split up my services into a tedious-to-read, tedious-to-ring-up menu--I don't get more customers. I lose the ones I have. They know I'm no longer motivated to sell quality: My new Service Revenue Streams have dis-incentivized me from selling good, low-maintenance specs at all.
Do I get the bargain market for new specs in its place? No. I'm still brick 'n' mortar and don't buy discontinued frames by weight.
But do I now get to service online schlock? No, 'cos the colleagues who didn't dive into an empty swimming pool along with me are still servicing specs for free. And they'll continue for the foreseeable future. That's a merciless business reality.
It doesn't do any professional any good to be the guy on the sidewalk with the "The End Is Coming" sign. What would really be prophetic are some Dates for when the industry transforms into some unipolar blob that dances to every twitch the internet makes. (The only End-of-the-World-ers I respected are the ones who showed up on my doorstep and gave me an exact date for The End Of The World...back before they lost their nerve to keep getting it wrong in the internet age.)
Absent that, there's still two markets. There's two philosophies of quality control. There's two 'mainstreams' of discipline in standardization. There are consumers who will validate you and feed you whichever pole you choose.
Nah, I think it registers. Did I talk myself into ignoring ANSI? Why? How wide is that tightrope between rationalizing slop because of my own selfish profiteering and genuinely yet foolishly thinking I can do the doctor's job for him/her? (Not too wide...if your business really is Health Care, that is.)
If we're in health care, then what we do is crucial. We spend more time with the patients than doctors do. We can catch a clue with the old specs that the OD tech (who has a troubled relationship with lensometers and auto-neutralizers) misses. We can ask almost every patient, "Did you tell your eye doctor this during your exam?" (Just ask that question for an alarming vindication of your role in health care.) And it all starts with the question "How well did you like your last pair of glasses?" We politely say, "No, that frame really will not work for your Rx." Saying No..That's what they pay us for...because the internet will always say "Yes!"
If your prescribing doc is a room away, sure you can ask him/her (while they foolishly try to eat lunch in their office, the suckers--) if an ANSI is fudgeable in any particular case. That's legit. Otherwise, just keep it simple and be as picky as you would want the guy making your own glasses to be. Sleep well at night knowing you didn't slippery slope to some other kind of 'entertainment' industry.
Hayde I couldn't have said it better myself.
Their products are of the highest quality, and that will not change .................
The two largest and highest quality optical manufacturers on a worldwide basis are presently the largest owners of the listed online opticals and will continue to be and do so.
These corporations do not take breath or make a move without in depth studies, and can afford to do do. They are betting a calculated way as they have done for the last 40 years.
Their products are of the highest quality, and that will not change to become a two pole market as was stated above.
My point is that "additive error" is a dynamic term with only a clear anchorage defined by the wearer.
And when Chris Ryser talks about E "quality" he is only referring to *product* quality.
Total eyewear quality is far more than that. Just ask any car or Apple owner.
ANSI is simple guidelines for labs, not dispensing opticians. Look again at my sidebar "Don't act like a lab"
B
Not cheapen - enlighten.
Ask Kodak and Polaroid, who doubled-down on product quality (and pricing) and ask yourself if that is what consumers really wanted...versus cheap and easy photos via cellphone.
Now technology has made cellphone photos better than many film cameras of the previous era.
The question is: Will you be there to see and enjoy it in optical?
B
What's the POSITIVE take home message?
Not what NOT to do...What TO do.
In non-jargon heavy, non-Futurama, non-business-speak, please.
If it's "act in the best visual and financial interests of your patients by using your optical expertise to determine what they need and what they don't need and then providing it in a caring way" then I think you've arrived at an old definition of professionalism.
I'd salute that.
They'll get theirs, in due time.
They'll own a big part of the marketplace (already do), but there will be a ceiling. And then we'll see if their strategy will work, long-term.
Barry, I have to take some issue with your film analogy. There are a good number of professional photographers that refuse to make the change - even though the price is higher than digital. There is a control, and a level of detail available - with the very cheapest of film cameras, and the cheapest of film - that even the most expensive, high end digital cameras today struggle to match. In addition, it can easily be said that digital photography has ushered in an era of unparalleled laziness and marked lack of quality. You don't understand lighting, aperture/F stops, ISO, shutter speed, or composition? Just set the thing to 'auto', and snap away. It doesn't matter if you shoot three thousand shots - you'll likely have 5 you can take away as "good enough". Pixelization, sloppy/soft focus, sagittal astigmatism in the corners of your kit lens, hot/dead pixels, dirty sensors...who cares right? I just hold that button down, and spray away at my subject and pray something turns out.
Mobile phones are even worse of course. But then, if you're a "photographer" who thinks Instagram and Flickr are the pinnacle showcases of your art, then yeah. You might be happy enough with that. But the irony remains, that for a large number of photographers both amateur & pro (myself included in the first bunch), that the search for "film-like quality" is what we're all looking for in the ever increasing quality of digital film devices.
In terms of eyewear, there is a bottom, and more and more people are finding out exactly what that place looks like. As more and more internut "dispensaries" dump out sloppier and sloppier product, people do understand that saving that extra few bucks may not have been worth it after all. And the importance of sitting down with a qualified dispenser in person, and having a dialog about needs, wants, and realistic expectations, coupled with a tightly controlled supply chain, really does make a noticeable difference for a majority of people.
Cheers
I respectfully disagree. Error is defined by the prescriber. Does patient input have an important role in that formula--absolutely. Is it the bottom line? Most of the time. But these aren't cars and the customer is not always right. The doc is the one who speaks for the patient's needs. We listen to the patient only to the point the doc isn't contradicted. This is health care. Sure I can rebound Px reports back to the doc for a new ruling, but I don't just toss their standing orders aside with my own estimation of Patient Satisfaction. I make a lot of customers unhappy by deferring to their doc. Directing them back to their doc to get me an RX that does what they're asking for. Usually won't even call for them trying to finesse the pitch on behalf of the patient--much better to force the Px and Dr to have a 1-on-1 'Meeting Jesus' moment. I know you believe this too, Barry, 'cos you won't even make plano lenses for self-proclaimed emmetropes without a Doc having signed off on it. You are the man!
Misunderstanding the resiliant miracle of patient tolerances isn't where slavish devotion to ANSI standards comes from. The practical problem I see in what you seem to suggest changes my business model from a) giving the patient's doc as wide a berth for their needed error buffer as I can possibly give them to b) edging myself into their already complicated equation because I'm oh-so-smart. Instead of phone calls to my lab (whom I can hear roll their eyes over the phone 'cause I'm kicking back 5-degrees on a 1 cyl) and apologizing to patients that their specs will be a couple of days late because I'm just fussy, I'm now arguing with doctors or their (often clueless) staff about those 5 degrees when the patient is back in their office--and then I have to explain to their patient why I passed it in the first place...and why they had to go to their doctors office to hear that According To The Doctor the axis was a little farther off than it really should have been. No thank you, I'd rather listen to the lab roll their eyes.
Docs have differing opinions on the shape and margins of 'leeway' you suggest we dispensers should be knowledgeable enough to synthesize. Given this, it's logically inescapable that if we're operating on our own synthesis, we risk crossing wires with a prescriber. If we're going to do that, we had better isolate the occurrence beforehand & handle it behind the curtain out of the patient's view before dispense. If the patient puts on something the doc didn't intend, then they're unavoidably already behind the curtain when a misunderstanding has to get resolved. Risking the patient seeing 'mom & dad' fight behind the curtain is never good health care.
Now when I get to know a doc and have talked with them enough to have a clue to their peculiar bead on things, yeah--I gladly admit I'm willing to loosen up. Only to the degree I'm certain they won't send the patient back to me claiming 'glasses are wrong.' But the liberty you seem to suggest taking just can't be responsibly done without their Doc's explicit or implicit sanction. Not without changing my business model, the kinds of phone calls I want to have in my day, and the reputation I (like to think I) have with patients and their doctors. When prescribers start buying the argument in your article and make themselves more easily and quickly available to say to outside opticals, 'Oh sure, 5 degrees--that's perfectly fine,' then that's just what I'll do. In the meantime, if I don't act like a lab, I'm acting like a doctor...and Not enough doctors will let me get away with it for my liking.
but there will be a ceiling. And then we'll see if their strategy will work..........
There used to a time when an optician retired, he would sell his store for good money to a younger one who would continue the business and prosper with it.
Not any more. These days the old folks are all selling to a retail chain that also belongs to Nikon-Essilor, see the thread in the Canadian Forum.
There is no ceiling, the sky's the limit. When the Luxottica deal is all approved later this year they will be in control of
some 6,000 established optical retail stores to start with.
As of next year the mode of big change will start to increase drastically and will be felt even more, and today's independents who do not need to adapt to it, will be the ones to pay the price.
I love it. What changes do you predict?As of next year the mode of big change will start to increase drastically and will be felt even more, and today's independents who do not need to adapt to it, will be the ones to pay the price.
How do we adapt? More p.d.s and adjustments for online eyewear?
Hayde:
That's why Opticians NEED TO BE ABLE TO REFRACT. Doc's DO NOT know as much as we do as to the recipe of what makes people happy/satisfied with their eyewear...if you are really good at what you do.
Opticians are not subordinates. They are equals (or superiors) when it comes to eyewear.
Period.
And opticians prospered when they WERE NOT subordinate to prescribers.
Time to go back.
B
(head down...incoming drk volley)
To when? The 19th century? When anyone could sell glasses off the streets?
In order to do that Barry (adding refraction and prescribing rights to dispensing), there would have to be a nationally agreed upon standard of care, standard of training, and standard of testing. Which of course will NEVER happen in America. We love our splintered state by state hodgepodge too much. And of course, the interwebs are just throwing more mud in the water now...
Plus, I still don't get what opticians refracting has to do with the original subject.
Something about not obsessing over standards, in this day of internet glasses?
Is it...
"Patients don't care about standards since they get their glasses on the internet"
"Standards are a joke, these days"
"If there are no standards, anymore, why have a standard that opticians can't refract"
???
If so, I'm sort of in agreement. If you don't need an Rx anymore to get glasses, what's the fuss about a doctor or an optician or grandma making a recipe for a home-brew lens order?
Is that the hidden message of your article? Because, despite the flame-throwing introduction, your written conclusion was a little...underwhelming. It went nowhere. I asked you for your conclusion.
Is it all about refracting?
How's that going to help opticians?
Last edited by drk; 05-02-2017 at 03:12 PM.
I think the answer is not:
1. having an autorefractor in your optical
2. having a smartphone refracting app laying on your coffee table
3. getting out the trial lenses
4. buying a used Green's phoroptor
because you are prohibited from:
1. treating vision disorders
2. making glasses without a physician's order
I think the answer is to closely work with the prescribers in your area and do what they cannot do. You're right about opticians being peerless about glasses. Why not leverage that advantage?
If you spend all your time learning to "refract" then you'll lose your specialty. It's happened to our profession, as I've said over and over.
It seems the 'standards' question leads to another elephant in the room...
Will spec Rxs soon be deregulated to a point they no longer require a, well...Rx?
Standards matter, yes. Barry just threw in a few Trumpisms to get our attention.
It addresses the demands of the wearer, as well as being a fabrication standard.
I'm going to say the glass is half-full, but needs clarification. Maybe a piece about Opternative, and/or the reckless and unethical nature of selling eyeglasses without a face-to-face fitting and personalized lens design assessment, the selling of IPDs and other ophthalmic measurements, etc.
Best regards,
Robert Martellaro
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. - Richard P. Feynman
Experience is the hardest teacher. She gives the test before the lesson.
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