The optical pays for the practice.Here is what running it badly costs.
Here are the published figures this product is built on — where an independent practice's revenue comes from, how many prescriptions leave the building unfilled, how often the sale is a plan question, and why the person at the bench is so often new. Every figure carries its attribution and its limits, because several of them are routinely quoted as things they are not.
54%
of an independent optometry practice's gross revenue came from product sales in 2019 — eyewear alone was 37%, against 21% from exams
ABB Analyze and CareCredit report
A revenue mix, not a margin, and from 2019. It says the optical is where the money is; it says nothing about what any tool does to it.
65%
of patients handed an eyeglass prescription fill it at the practice that wrote it, on average, where the practice has its own optical — the rest buy elsewhere
VisionWatch figure, as cited in the trade press
The underlying VisionWatch report is subscriber-only, so this is the figure as the trade press quotes it. An average across practices, not a target, and nothing here claims a tool moves it.
36%
of eyecare providers reported a severe or extreme shortage of opticians; six in ten reported at least a moderate shortage of qualified staff
The Vision Council reports
A survey of providers about hiring, in which hiring was the biggest challenge reported. It is why the person at the bench is often new; it is not a claim about training them.
The rest of the picture
The plans the bench has to quote, the pipeline of people who will be quoting them, and what it costs when one of them leaves.
- 48%
of consumers receive managed vision care coverage through their employer — the plan whose allowance and copays the bench has to quote
The Vision Council reports · The Vision Council — Consumer inSights, Q4 2025
Employer-sponsored coverage only; total coverage is higher. It sizes how often a sale is a plan question, not how well anybody answers it.
- 5,600
openings for dispensing opticians projected each year, on average, from 2025 to 2035, most of them replacing people who leave the occupation
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects · BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Opticians, Dispensing
A national projection of openings, not a turnover rate for any one practice. It says the bench is regularly staffed by somebody new.
- 40%
of annual salary — Gallup's estimate of what it costs to replace a frontline employee, rising to about 80% for technical professionals
Gallup estimates · Gallup — replacement-cost estimates
An estimate of replacement cost, not a saving. It only becomes money when a departure is actually avoided.
- ~10 hrs
recaptured per week, and 11 more patients seen, by doctors who delegate non-physician tasks to well-trained or certified paraoptometric staff
AOA reports · American Optometric Association — staff connection / delegation
Reported by doctors who delegate well. It is what good delegation is worth, not what installing software is worth.
- 58% / 50%
greater three-year retention associated with structured onboarding, and greater new-hire productivity associated with standardized onboarding
research cited by SHRM · SHRM — onboarding research summary
These are figures SHRM cites from other research, not SHRM's own experimental results. Association, not established cause.
Does practicing before the patient actually teach?
The training modules that run alongside the tools rest on this. It is the one figure on the page about a method rather than the problem, and it is the best-evidenced thing here.
609
studies
35,226
trainees
Across 609 studies and 35,226 health-professions trainees, technology-enhanced simulation was associated with significant gains in knowledge, skills, behaviors and patient outcomes compared with no intervention.
Cook et al., JAMA 2011 · JAMA meta-analysis of technology-enhanced simulation
The meta-analysis reports substantial heterogeneity, and it covers health-professions training broadly rather than optical staff specifically. It is strong evidence that practicing before the patient works — not a transferable effect size for this product.
How we use these numbers — and how we don't
Every figure above describes a problem or a method. None of them describes an outcome measured from this product, and we will not present them as though they do. No practice has run OptoLearn long enough to have that data yet.
The honest version of the pitch is narrower and more useful: you know your own capture rate and what a new hire costs you to bring up to speed, and you can work out for yourself how little this would have to move either to be worth having.
What we would rather show you, once we can
The evidence worth having is the evidence from practices actually running this. Some of it the product already records. The rest names what it would still take to collect:
- How often a practice's bench reaches for the calculator and the visuals in a week — which needs a count the product does not keep yet, because it stores no quote
- Whether the capture rate moves after the tools go in — which the practice would have to tell us, from its own system, because nothing here sees a sale
- How many runs a practice logs on a module before a certification passes, and which part of the rubric loses the most points
- Doctor and manager hours per new hire, before and after — which needs somewhere to enter an hour
- Retention and turnover — which a practice would have to tell us, because nothing here can see somebody leave