The optometrist’s secretaries (both of them) assured us with complete sincerity that contact lens prescriptions are not transferable in Illinois, and flat-out refused to give it to us on a piece of paper so we could go around town and do some pricing and possibly get them at Wal-Mart.
This is a serious downtown family doctor-type optometrist, so I don’t really think she’s just trying to sell contact lenses. They even had a little brochure printed up to explain this. It has something to do with “reputable optometrists will not give their patients’ prescriptions out, because they need to see the lens in place on the eyeball to make sure there are no fitting problems or eye diseases or anything.”
I asked the secretaries, “How do those mail order contact lens places make any money, then? The places like 1-800-CONTACTS? They have a place on the form for you to fill out your right eye/left eye measurements. If nobody is allowed to take their own prescriptions home with them, how do they do it?” They said, shrugging, that they guessed there must be a lot of disreputable optometrists out there who DO let their patients have their prescriptions, and also, one volunteered, “Some people photocopy the top of their disposable lens boxes and send that in.”
Your optometrist is either rationalizing to herself (good interpretation) or self-dealing (bad interpretation). Your doc’s brochure sez “reputable optometrists will not give their patients’ prescriptions out, because they need to see the lens in place on the eyeball to make sure there are no fitting problems or eye diseases or anything.” Does your optometrist prescribe/sell disposable or daily contacts? If she does, sure as hell she doesn’t have you come in every day to check that the new daily contact fits correctly and that it’s not causing/exacerbating eye disease. Therefore, her brochure’s rationale is faulty.
A year or so ago, the AMA was caught in a bitter internal dispute about self-referrals (referring a patient to a clinic in which the doctor has a financial interest). I don’t recall the result, but the same problem applies here. Your optometrist is likely making a large percentage of her profits from the sale of contact lenses, and doesn’t want to lose that business to wholesalers.
As for the law in Illinois, I have no idea. However, your optometrists’ interpretation doesn’t make much sense, as you could bring the prescription to another optometrist, etc., and I don’t think the law would want to prevent that. Similarly, under your optometrist’s interpretation, MD’s should set up pharmacies in their offices, so they can make sure the dosages, etc., are correct.
Sua
Well, in Massachusetts my optometrist always gives me a piece of paper to do with as I will, although he strongly discourages going to mail order for the reasons listed in your post. It happens that I buy them at the Pearle Vision center in which his office is located. He hasn’t checked the fit of a new set for a few years, probably because I’ve been using the same brand for many years and the same prescription for a few years. I’m just about his only patient not in disposables, because the ones I’ve been using work so well.
I doubt that it’s legal to force you to buy your contact lenses anywhere in particular, but I sure can’t prove it.
"The following list shows the states that have guidelines requiring eye doctors to release contact lens prescription information to their patients: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, N. Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Most eye care professionals do not have a problem releasing current contact lens prescription information to their patients."
You may be interested in knowing that several online merchants do not bother to ask for prescriptions. The few times I have ordered contact lenses online, the merchants have not even pretended to be interested in a prescription. (I do have one, but they did not ask for it.)
Of course, you should still go and get regular checkups, even though you can get lenses without a prescription.
Thanks, everybody (especially JonF, “gracious, child, all those links!”) I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it in the office, and besides, they were offering two pairs plus the exam for $99, which wasn’t bad.
I asked him for the prescription info because I had found that he charge me almost twice as much as 1800contacts.com did.
He explained that he would give me a copy, but went on to say why he felt that I should continue to buy my disposable lenses from his practice: they give free advice, solutions and other supplies etc.
This argument has merit.
Before I left though, he required me to sign a form for my file that said (in essence) that I understood that if I suffered any harm due to buying my lenses elsewhere, I would release his practice of all liability.
That was reasonable.
I have not yet had to buy any more lenses… but I will soon. I am still not sure what I will do.
I’ve never been given my prescription in a written form, but I know from looking at the box my lenses come in that my left eye is -8 and my right eye is -7.
Nothing stopping me from ordering online, which I’ll probably do in a few months. My optometrist at home agrees that I have no reason to pay to get a new prescription when my eyesight hasn’t changed. And before anyone decries my doc as incompetent, he just saw me six months ago. However, I’m now 4000km and no free health care away from him, so I’ll take my chances with yearly updates rather than twice yearly.
The free supplies and solutions the doctor is giving you almost certainly don’t cost him anything - they get tons of freebies from manufacturers to give to patients. It’s a great deal for the manufacturer: If the doctor says, “Use Bauch and Laumb multi-care solution” and gives you a free trial pack, you’re almost certain to continue using that brand. In general, the same is true for other doctors as well, which is why they get inundated with freebies.
Buy them from the mail-order place if the price is very different. It’s good for the market as a whole. Here in Edmonton, a discount contact lens outlet opened a couple of years ago, and almost overnight doctors started charging less for their contacts. Before that, they were operating as a cartel, since patients didn’t have a choice but to go through them. If it wasn’t a medical industry, they’d be guilty of price fixing. Now there is a choice, and it’ll lead to better service and lower prices.
Then how can you see straight? If they don’t get your prescription, there’s no way for them to know what power to give you in the lens. You could require, say, a power of 1.75 in both eyes, and if you don’t give them that prescription, they “guess” and send you 2.75 lenses, then you’re going to be damn blind, now won’t you? They have to have a prescription, unless they’re simply non vision-correcting lenses.
and just goes to show you that (as my dad would say) greed overcomes all obstacles. Optometrists stand to lose LOTS of money if people don’t have to pay their high mark-ups and can get contact lenses at close to cost.
Well, they always ask you about the desired power, base curve, and diameter (and for toric lenses, the cylinder and axis, I assume). They don’t just send you a random box of lenses…
What I meant was that they did not ask me for a formal prescription from an optometrist or ophthalmologist. In other words, all I had to do was to tell them what lenses I wanted. All the necessary information is on the disposable box that your old contact lenses came in. They were not interested in knowing whether or not I had had a valid prescription.
The last sentence of my post should have read “They were not interested in knowing whether or not I HAD a valid prescription.” (Although I am sure that they must have been just as disinterested in whether I had ever had a valid prescription.)
