NEW YORK—The Management & Business Academy (MBA), a practice management initiative for leading practices, sponsored by CIBA Vision and Essilor, with endorsement by the American Optometric Association (AOA), has put together its findings from a survey of MBA graduates about their Web sites and participation in social media, Web site functions and services.

The findings enable practitioners to compare their offices' practices against others within the MBA community. Based on an April 2010 survey of MBA practices:

  • 91 percent of practice have Web sites of which 55 percent engage an outside service to update and manage.
  • 51percent of MBA practice Web sites have a contact lens reordering function.
  • 39 percent of graduates are an active member of social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

The information demands of the Web seem to prove daunting to many practices. The survey reveals that 48 percent of optometric practices of all sizes are updating content on their Web sites quarterly or more frequently in 2010 compared to 53 percent who said so in 2009. Only 15 percent of practices are updating their practice

Web site info once a month, while 5 percent update it two to three times per month and only 1 percent update info on their sites once a week or more.

In 2010, 60 percent of MBA practices said their sites featured pages to respond to patient queries, 67 percent featured an ocular disease information/archive, 34 percent offered appointment scheduling.

These and other related findings from the survey are detailed in Practice Web Site Survey, now available on MBA-ce.com.