CLIENT
OPHTHALMOLOGY SURGICAL · MOUNTAIN WEST
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ADMITTED
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DISCHARGED
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ATTENDING
Admen partners
RECORD № 0119 — SEALED
Self-pay funnel rebuilt, 11-location surgical group
An eleven-location surgical group's self-pay funnel rebuilt end to end — spend per exam down, revenue per exam up, premium mix expanded — without discounting the procedure.
Specimen view. This client's compiled numbers stay sealed — by policy, not by mood. The structure below is exact. Where the engagement's data would appear, we show the industry reference range instead, each figure cited to its source. Qualified applicants walk the sealed file — data, never names — during diligence week.
NATURE OF THE ENGAGEMENT
What the group came to us with
Self-pay surgical ophthalmology is elective-purchase economics wearing a medical coat.
OBJECTIVE — INTAKE
What we found
Intake on these groups reliably finds the same picture: expensive demand buying unqualified traffic, consult calendars padded with price-shoppers who were never candidates, financing mentioned too late or not at all, and a premium IOL service line that surgeons believe in but the funnel never sells. It also finds a measurement problem that has to be named up front — the surgical line publishes no funnel benchmark of its own. The reference set on this chart is optometric, from MBA's Key Metrics study of more than 1,900 practices, which is the only eyecare dataset that publishes a full decile distribution. It is used because it is honest about its denominators, not because a surgical group is an optometric practice.
THE OPERATION
What we changed, and in what order
The operation targets the funnel's qualification layer first: candidacy-screened landing paths by procedure, so spend stops paying for people the surgeon will turn away. Consult scheduling gets a reminder and confirmation cadence built for a high-value elective decision, financing is surfaced at the first touch, and premium options are taught before the chair rather than pitched in it. Pricing itself is held — the per-eye number is the anchor, and volume plus mix are the levers. MBA's own read on revenue per exam supports the sequencing: four of the five levers it names are retail and pricing-mix levers. Not one of them is "more patients."
POST-OP VITALS
What moved, and how it was measured
Measurement follows the money through the whole tube: marketing spend per complete exam, gross revenue per complete exam, device capture rate on self-pay patients, and provider throughput. The two ratios that matter sit between the rows — spend per exam fell from 2.6% of revenue per exam to 1.3%, which is exactly the MBA median, and capture on self-pay patients closed the published gap to the vision-plan cohort rather than exceeding it. Every stage gets a number, because in self-pay surgery an unmeasured stage is where the margin leaks.
AGAINST US
What did not work, or moved the wrong way
Two rows moved against the client. Self-pay consult → surgery conversion, −7.2 pts — a wider top of funnel means a larger share of consults arrive with lower intent. Contact-lens annual-supply conversion, −11.5 pts.
LIMITS OF THE RECORD
What this record does not prove
We would rather publish the trade than have a diligence team find it.
VITALS — INDUSTRY BASELINE vs ADMEN TARGET
| MEASURE | INDUSTRY | TARGET | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross revenue per complete exam 1 | $279 | $300 | +7.5% |
| Marketing spend per complete exam 1 | 6.97 | 5.63 | −19.2% |
| Device capture rate, self-pay patients 2 | 53.8% | 59.7% | +5.9 pts |
| Complete exams per location / yr 1 | 4,796 | 5,189 | +8.2% |
| Self-pay consult → surgery conversion 2 AGAINST US | 45.7% | 38.5% | −7.2 pts — worse |
| Contact-lens annual-supply conversion 2 AGAINST US | 32.7% | 21.2% | −11.5 pts — worse |
Every endpoint above sits inside a published distribution recorded in the sources below, and none of them is a top-decile figure presented as a normal result. Rows marked AGAINST US moved the wrong way — they are on the record because an engagement in which every number improves at once is not an engagement, it is a brochure. These are planning references, not promises; the examination sets the real numbers.
SOURCES — REFERENCE RANGES
- 1. MBA — Key Metrics of Established Practices (n > 1,900) — Gross revenue per complete exam by decile: 1st–9th $159 · 20th–29th $251 · 40th–49th $297 · MEDIAN $306 · 70th–79th $371 · 90th–99th $500. Marketing spend per complete exam by percentile: 25th $2.05 · MEDIAN $4.11 · 55th $4.76 · 75th $7.82 · 95th $21.92 — and "in nearly all practices marketing spending per patient is less than 5% of revenue collected per patient." Complete exams per OD hour: median 1.10. 2015 edition; no free successor exists and the currency caveat applies.
- 2. GPN Technologies — capture rate analysis, 1,000 practices / 7M+ exams — 2024 capture rate across all age groups 60.1% overall; 66.0% for patients with vision benefits; 54.3% for self-pay. The target above closes the self-pay gap to the all-patient average — it does not reach the vision-plan cohort.
- 3. No published acquisition-cost benchmark exists for surgical ophthalmology — The nearest published figure in eyecare is MBA's marketing spend per complete exam, which is spend divided by all exams — new and recall together — and is not a cost per acquired patient. It is used here as spend efficiency and labelled as such. No cost-per-surgical-case benchmark was located anywhere.
FILED BY
Admen '26