A new survey is seeking to recommend charge-out rates based on operating expenses for New Zealand optometry practices.
Conducted by Robert Ng from the School of Optometry and Vision Science (SOVS) at the University of Auckland, it builds on his team’s 2021 work examining optometry charges and costs. The new survey was inspired by the New Zealand Dental Association, which conducts regular fee surveys, said Ng. “Although optometry is a mixture of services and products and dentistry is almost exclusively service-based, I thought this would be beneficial for the optometry industry too.”
As well as questions about fees and the time involved delivering services, the survey covers the retail price of a couple of spectacle lenses for benchmarking, he said, explaining it is included because often the fee is used by the practice as a loss leader, or partial loss leader.
