Nancy Hemphill, ELS, FAAO , 2025-04-25 19:17:00
April 25, 2025
2 min read
Key takeaways:
- More than half of surgeons surveyed were pessimistic about the next 5 years of commercial ophthalmology.
- The majority of industry representatives were optimistic.
LOS ANGELES — Results of a survey conducted among ophthalmic industry, administrators and surgeons revealed that industry representatives are most optimistic about the financial future of commercial ophthalmology.
American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery executive director Steve Speares shared the results of the survey, which was recently conducted among SightLine attendees, at the inaugural SightLine meeting.
Speares said Vance Thompson, MD, as ASCRS president, sought to “increase the business acumen and support the business needs of our membership. We felt strongly that it’s important for practices to be nurtured and informed, office to surgery center. That’s the genesis of this meeting.”
As a way of starting a dialogue and developing a barometer to gauge how commercial ophthalmology is doing, ASCRS surveyed SightLine attendees just prior to the meeting.
Speares defined commercial ophthalmology as “everything that touches a commercial interaction in a practice,” and he identified the stakeholders to be surgeons, administrators, office managers, practice staff and industry partners.
The first question in the two-question survey was: As you consider your firm’s/practice’s financial condition, which best describes your feeling about the next 5 years?
“Industry folks that responded [N = 81] were pretty bullish,” Speares said. “Almost 80% were optimistic or very optimistic.”
Of the 106 administrators who replied, 58.5% were either optimistic or very optimistic, but 35.8% were pessimistic.
“That’s a little bit of a concern, and especially of concern was 6% were very pessimistic,” Speares said.
“Then come the surgeons,” he continued. “Now we know where our work is. Surgeons are really not in a good mood these days. They’ve got tons of reasons to feel that way.”
The survey showed that 50.5% of surgeons were pessimistic, with another 12.5% very pessimistic.
“There’s just not a lot of enthusiasm out there, and there were 184 responses,” Speares said. “Not only were they in a bad mood, they were eager to tell us they were in a bad mood.”
The second question was: If you were providing investment advice, how would you characterize ophthalmology as an investment opportunity?
“This is just meant to be a temperature check,” Speares said. “This is simply how people are feeling going into this meeting. Industry is still pretty confident, but we lost 25% of respondents with this question.”
Of 61 industry respondents, 58.3% said they would consider ophthalmology “a logical part of a balanced portfolio,” while 30% said “very attractive with great potential.”
The 106 administrator respondents were relatively positive overall, Speares said, with 43.4% supporting ophthalmology as part of a balanced portfolio and 34% deeming it “low growth, low risk.”
Of the 182 surgeons who responded to the question, 21.4% said “avoid at all costs.”
“Can you imagine if your customer said that to you?” Speares said.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he continued. “This is the purpose of the meeting, to constantly measure and assess what we need to do.”
Sources/Disclosures
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Speares S. Survey results on attitudes and trends in commercial ophthalmology and ASOA market trend survey. Presented at: SightLine; April 24, 2025; Los Angeles.
Disclosures:
Speares reports being ASCRS executive director.
