(L to R) Vision Source executives Jeff Duncan, Jim Greenwood, Dr. Amir Khoshnevis and Michael Marcroft.
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TAMPA, Fla.—More than 3,100 Vision Source members and staff members gathered here at the Tampa Convention Center late last week for The Exchange, the annual meeting for the membership to participate in continuing medical education, visit a robust exhibit hall and join discussions around peer-to-peer best practice sharing. The theme of this year’s event was “Lead On.” The meeting comes as Vision Source members have just closed the books on another strong year in 2018, a year that featured enhanced education efforts, stronger sales performances and more opportunities to participate in collaboration initiatives.

“This is truly a one-of-a-kind organization, founded by doctors for doctors,” Vision Source president and chief executive officer Jim Greenwood said at a press event late Thursday. He noted that “seeing what this organization has become [while] sitting next to the founder, Dr. Glenn Ellisor, just gave me energy as the day went on.”

Jeff Duncan, executive vice president and chief operating officer, agreed that Vision Source is a robust organization as evidenced by the health of its members’ practices, measured by the year-over-year growth of each individual office-practice location. “In 2018, our members continued to thrive,” Duncan said at the press event. “We grew at nearly 6 percent … when the industry was flat or about 2 points of growth.”

This shows that member practices continue to far outpace the industry in terms of growth, Duncan said. “And I think what’s important to highlight in [this growth] is that our members—because many of them have been with us a long time—are not operating small practices… Our practice average size now is nearing $900,000 [annually]. So our growth is on a very large practice size.”

Another of the Vision Source programs doing well is the Vision Source Next initiative, which was announced at The Exchange a year ago. Under the “Next” umbrella, 43 new private practices debuted in 2018, Duncan said. This indicates Vision Source is growing both across its existing customer base and by adding new independent practice locations, Duncan noted.

Two-thirds of the Vision Source Next practices were opened by totally new members, with existing Vision Source doctors opening the balance. In the “Next” program, a third-party financing source helps the new owner with start-up capital while Vision Source provides other resources and start-up tools.

Duncan also provided more details on the tactics that are supporting the growth across the membership. These break down into three buckets, he noted. They are: providing educational programs to members, better equipping membership and finding ways to facilitate collaboration among the membership. In terms of education, membership practices (including staff) completed 30,000 courses in 2018 “and that will only grow in 2019,” he said.

Dr. Amir Khoshnevis, executive vice president and chief clinical officer, said Vision Source will continue to invest in clinical protocol. He noted the recent dry eye protocol “has been wildly successful” and that next up is a protocol for age-related macular degeneration.

Vision Source also is launching a myopia management initiative in collaboration with the Brien Holden Institute, and partners Essilor and CooperVision, that will seek to raise awareness of the condition. “Our objective at Vision Source is to educate and raise awareness of the issue, and to make sure that doctors are getting very comfortable with the topic,” he said.