How To Write an Optometry Business Plan
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Highlights
- An optometry business plan serves as an operational roadmap for opening a new optometry practice.
- Your optometry business plan should include your vision for the practice, an executive summary, and financial projections.
- Optometry business plans may focus on patient metrics goals, services you offer, and marketing strategies.
- Using a cloud-based optometry EHR practice management system supports you in following your business plan to reach your outlined objectives.
Writing an optometry business plan is vital for operating a successful optometry practice. To develop an achievable operations strategy, familiarize yourself with the basic format of a small business plan and customize the standard elements for your optometry practice.
By creating a comprehensive and actionable business plan for your practice, you can develop a successful optometry brand that sees continued growth and success.
Build a Customized Optometry Business Plan
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) encourages small business owners of every type to create a customized business plan for their business. While the SBA acknowledges that there is no standard way to write a business plan, it offers advice on writing traditional, multi-page business plans and shorter, lean startup plan templates for business owners around the country.
The SBA stresses that business owners should tailor their plans to their industry and needs. For example, as a healthcare provider, you may customize your business plan by including information about your ideal patient base and what types of optometry services you plan to offer.
If you are just starting your practice and seeking funding, you should opt for a traditional business plan that includes a funding request and financial projections. However, if you’re writing a business plan intended to help you boost revenue for your existing practice, you may forgo the funding request section and focus on outlining a marketing strategy or tracking metrics.
8 Basic Business Plan Elements
The optometric resource ODs on Finance offers a template of what to include when writing a business plan for optometry practices. The template contains basic elements of a traditional business plan that you’ll want to consider when crafting one for your practice.
Going through each of these elements helps you anticipate roadblocks and think through possible solutions. It can also help you get funding or partners for your burgeoning practice.
1. Executive Summary
An executive summary makes a concise statement about your business. In this section, you should describe your business and give an overview of what you do. The executive summary is short and sweet, including your mission statement, business philosophy, and an outline of why your practice will be successful.
2. Company Description
In the company description section, you’ll want to touch on your patients’ health issues and how you can help solve them. This is where you differentiate your practice from other practices in the area or describe your specialty optometry niche. Write as precisely as possible about what you offer patients and what makes your practice stand out from the crowd.
3. Organization and Management
In the organization section of your optometry business plan, outline the management structure of your practice. Let the reader know how your practice is set up, including its legal designation.
Ensure you answer the following questions:
- LLC or corporation registration
- Sole ownership or co-ownership of practice
- Staffing information (such as optometric assistants and front-office staff)
4. Market Analysis
Complete a market analysis by evaluating your competitors in the industry and identifying what sets your practice apart from theirs.
Step 1: Review what works for these optometry practices and what makes them successful.
Step 2: Outline how you will stand ahead of the competition with a unique product or service.
5. Services Offered
Your optometry business plan should include a detailed description of all the services you’ll provide at your practice. If you plan to offer specialty eye care services or testing, outline these in your services section. Don’t forget to include virtual eye care services if you plan to provide them to meet your patients’ needs.
6. Marketing and Sales
A good optometry business plan also details an optometry marketing strategy that you will use to attract and retain patients. You’ll want to include demographic information on your ideal patient base, such as their age, vision care needs, and preferred methods of communication.
Outline how you plan to reach these patients using marketing tools like social media, ad campaigns, and a user-friendly website. You may also consider using SMS texts and email campaigns as part of your marketing strategy.
7. Funding Request
If you are writing a business plan to get funding to start your new optometry practice, include a funding request in your document. This request appeals to lenders and tells them why your practice is a good investment.
Include the following in your business plan funding request:
- How much you need to borrow
- How you will use the funds — be specific
- Your plan for paying back investors
8. Financial Projections
The final section of your optometry business plan requires you to crunch the numbers to project your practice’s finances for the next few years.
This section is a financial outlook that includes forecasted data regarding balance sheets, cash flow statements, and income statements. Consider projecting five years ahead, with the first two broken down by month. Use easy-to-read charts and visual representation to represent this data.
Business Plan Considerations for Optometry Practices
In addition to following the general template for a small business plan document, you’ll want to focus on a few particular elements for your optometry practice’s customized plan.
Be sure you include:
Optometric Financing Requirements
Consider optometric financing requirements when preparing your financial projections and funding request. In addition to essential optometry equipment needed to provide glasses and eye exams, consider tools like retinal cameras, visual field diagnostic equipment, a corneal topography device, and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) equipment.
Build these tools’ costs into your plan to get the funding for up-to-date equipment to treat your patients.
Patient Records and HIPAA Compliance
In your business plan, include how you plan to meet HIPAA requirements. A successful practice must have a long-term strategy for securely handling patient information and communication.
You may also want to consider how you will meet the challenges of getting reimbursements for MIPS, such as using an optometry EHR with built-in coding engines that simplify this reporting process.
RevolutionEHR Can Help You Build a Successful Optometry Business
Using the right optometry EHR practice management software can help you start and grow a successful optometry practice. RevolutionEHR is an all-in-one cloud-based optometry EHR system that provides everything you need to meet the goals you outline in your optometry business plan.
Our completely integrated optometry EHR allows you to provide HIPAA-compliant patient communication through SMS texts and encrypted email servers. RevAspire, an ancillary tool, helps you simplify MIPS reporting and gives you access to a MIPS consultant so you can boost your practice’s cash flow.
Finally, RevolutionEHR offers you multiple reporting functions so you can easily track metrics like sales, inventory, payments, and more. These features support your ability to meet your business plan projects and grow your practice.
Learn why RevolutionEHR gives you the freedom to focus on building and growing your optometry practice no matter what stage of business you’re in. Book a demo today.
Backed by deep expertise in optometry and a commitment to the success of eye care practices, RevolutionEHR offers insights and perspectives designed to help providers streamline operations, enhance patient care, and thrive in a changing healthcare landscape.