Thank you to Alcon for supporting this podcast and the optometric profession as a whole. Dr. Amanda Nanasy and Dr. Jennifer Lyerly were both compensated for their participation in this podcast.

Optometrists have never had better technology for enhancing contact lens comfort and vision. Today’s podcast guests—Dr. Carla Mack, Senior Director of Professional Strategy for Alcon, and Dr. Amanda Nanasy, optometrist and sports vision specialist at The Eye Center of Pembroke Pines in Florida—are both passionate advocates for the power of contact lens prescribing both in growing your optometric practice and improving patient quality of life. They outline strategies for improving your practice success by prescribing daily disposable lenses and multifocal contact lenses.

This year Alcon celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Power of One™ Program that revolutionized optometric prescribing habits to enhance patient compliance with a focus on contact lenses with daily and monthly lens replacement frequencies.1,2 Despite increasing numbers of practitioners embracing daily disposable contact lens prescribing, there are huge opportunities for growth in the market yet to be realized.3 Studies show 80% of patients say they are more interested in wearing daily disposable lenses when recommended by their eye care professional, and 99% of eye care professionals want to fit more of their patients in daily disposable lenses.4,5

New research from the Power of One™ 2.0 aggregated from 2.6 million patients proves that contact lens patients spend more at their optometrist’s office than glasses-only patients, and daily disposable lens wearers spend more than monthly or two-week replacement lens wearers.6

Dr. Nanasy has a strong daily disposable practice, and her biggest advice to practitioners wanting to grow their daily market is to offer the technology to every patient, every time. Many optometrists pre-judge patients, or ask questions in the exam lane that fail to elicit patient dissatisfaction with current contact lenses. If you ask a question that can be answered with, “fine” you’re probably not getting a true gauge on how your patients are really feeling about their lenses. Her goal is to make every annual eye exam a chance for her to talk about new and improved technology.

The biggest opportunity for contact lens growth is in multifocal lens technology. The American population is getting older; by 2020 there will be approximately 1,800 presbyopic patients for each eye care professional,7,8 only about 13% of eye care professionals in the US are currently fitting multifocal or monovision lenses.9 Recent data shows presbyopic patients suffer through a range of emotions, including feeling old (51%) and frustration (43%),10 and multifocal contact lenses can help meet the needs of these patients who are physically and socially active, embrace technology and are appearance conscious.11-14

Through the Practitioners Visiting Alcon Program, Dr. Nanasy has seen firsthand how Alcon’s new fitting process leads to increased first lens fit success. With the new fitting guide, there is a 96% fit success with 2 lenses or less per eye.15,16 For doctors that have struggled with multifocal patient success in the past, Dr. Nanasy encourages practitioners to keep the process simple and follow the fit guide. In her own practice she had a patient complain of distance blur in her initial lens selection. Every part of her previous body of optometric knowledge told her to hold up minus lenses and over-refract, but the fit guide recommended adding plus. She decided to follow her own advice and adhere to the fit guide, and was amazed at her patient’s positive response.

Dr.