Inferior Vision

[drk]

I mean, Superior Vision.

A large, old, cranky retiree group (all retired State of Ohio employees) is migrating to Superior from EyeMed.

I don't feel like welcoming these new migrants. I may build a wall of non-participation.

However, in the spirit of making money, I mean, welcoming the vision care needs of our fine senior citizens, I will consider having a gate that allows these essentially ophthalmology patients into my optometric practice.

IF.

IF Superior Vision will not lead me to an earlier grave than I'm already heading to.

Do you have any industry intelligence on "Superior"?

[Uilleann]

They're utterly AWFUL. So are Davis, Spectera, and the rest in their class of bottom feeders.

Can you offer an "in-house" option that would sit near their co-pay price point - using a selection of cost effective frames (think Modern et al) and do the lab work privately?

[DanLiv]

If you are a practice that tries to stay within the bounds of a patient's insurance, then Superior pays next to nothing for terribly low copays. However on premium non-scheduled products they are just about a 25% discount. And they do not restrict your lab network like Spectera and Davis so you can fulfill the eyewear privately. We no longer take it for reasons other than it's profitability, but in our area it was only a tiny trickle of patients anyway. If you foresee a large patient base I would say it's worth it just to get patients in your chair, as long as you can navigate their fee schedule.

[drk]

Good feedback guys!

[Elvis Is Alive]

For some background, Versant Health owned both Davis Vision and Superior Vision. MetLife completed acquisition of Versant in January of 2021. Both of them are awful. If you need pt volume, hold your nose and dive in. If not, stay away. A Galaxy Far Far Away.

[drk]

We had a meeting about this, today, after you all's feedback.

We've been through this general concept before: how low do you go?

We're not actually interested in attracting retirees/seniors that have low-end VCPs attached to, say, their Medicare "Advantage" plans (private Medicare), and they come out of the woodwork, for sure. The problem is that they all seem to have the misconception (that is really fostered by the salespeople at the VCPs and the health insurers) that they have "EYE Insurance" (even though it's commonly referred to as "Vision" and "Dental" but they don't get that).

If they believe they have "Eye Insurance" and you're their provider, then they get "eye exams" (whatever the heck those are) for a low copayment. Not something that they have a specialist copayment and a deductable, like they truly need if they get their aged infirmities managed (and all retirees have cataracts and DM and HTN and vitreous degeneration and AMD, etc. ad nauseum). So you're constantly under pressure to educate these pennypinchers that they can't use their routine exam benefit.

So the so-called allure to accepting these Medicare/Retirees is to build your practice with medical services and provide a little optical services on the side. It sounds so easy. But it's not. It's "hard money" and not "easy money".

We have a decent amount of State retirees in our patient base, already, and we stand to lose some of them over this. That's the real reason we were considering Inferior Vision. Ultimately we've decided to simply have a nice collection that is price-point friendly and a decent PAL that is serviceable and if that's not enough, they can take their Rxs out to some other optical. And since we don't encourage care fragmentation, I'd be happier for them if they just left our practice to be integrated into the Superior Vision providers' optometric services. But that's not going to sit well...the providers for that around here, currently, are not the best of the optometric community.

Oh well, maybe my tax dollars are catching a break not giving these retirees cadillac vision care plans (as if).

[DanLiv]

If they believe they have "Eye Insurance" and you're their provider, then they get "eye exams" (whatever the heck those are) for a low copayment. Not something that they have a specialist copayment and a deductable, like they truly need if they get their aged infirmities managed (and all retirees have cataracts and DM and HTN and vitreous degeneration and AMD, etc. ad nauseum). So you're constantly under pressure to educate these pennypinchers that they can't use their routine exam benefit.
So the so-called allure to accepting these Medicare/Retirees is to build your practice with medical services and provide a little optical services on the side. It sounds so easy. But it's not. It's "hard money" and not "easy money".

You have read the situation perfectly drk. The ONLY benefit of vision plans to providers is getting people into the office (it's just advertising). Once they are there, it's up to us to educate them, offer proper care for proper fees, and ultimately make their business profitable for the practice. You are right it's the "hard money" not "easy money". We have taken exactly this road and fortunately been able to implement this over the last few years and convert a large percentage of our routine patients to medical patients. It has greatly increased clinic collections (from medical insurers instead of vision plans), and our docs find they really only have to have the complex "medical vs vision" conversation once and then the patients are on autopilot for medical eye exams every year (with better compliance than most routine vision patients!). Then they come to my optical with their vision plans and it's up to me to make that profitable.

Some people with these poor vision plans don't opt to come back and instead seek a budget provider that just gives them what their benefits dictate. But even if retention of some of these patients is lower than for other plans, the benefits to both patient and practice are high. If your schedules are not full, (almost) anything that brings in extra people and gives you an opportunity to impress them with your business is worth a try.

[drk]

You really get it, Dan.

[juno]

Man Superior is hot garbage. Terrible co-pays from the patient perspective, an awful benefit navigation from the optician perspective, garbage reimbursement from the accountant's perspective, it's Just Bad (tm) all around. I mean, maybe the Ohio plan is really good or something, but I haven't seen one of those from Superior yet :|

[KrystleClear]

It's been awhile since I had to deal with Superior, but I remember them being awful. I hate when an insurance doesn't make the coverage for materials clear. I don't want to solve an equation and then have to solve a bridge troll's riddle just to determine how much a patient should pay for a progressive lens. Why can't they all just say we pay X amount or patient copay is X amount???