Walmart practices grew 10% during 2008, on average, as Sam's Club practices grew 6%.

Growth also varied depending on years at location.

I'll be interested to see what 2009 stats will say. Anecdotally, my business was up 8% in 2008 while so far for 2009 I currently forecast it to be down over 8% (so back to 2007 levels). So when you think about it, 2009 could see me be down 16-18% from where I wanted to be.

Thanks Obama. That was such a great idea to spend our way out of a recession and have the government take over several private sector industries. Idiot.

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Here's what clinches it for me:

Furthermore, despite the marketing hype, ePrescribe "provides absolutely no cost or time savings for pharmacies or pharmacists," since any errors in typing or if a doctor wants to change anything on the refill will cost the pharmacy another 30 cents…
[Doctor Grumpy]…also reports numerous problems about the amount of time it takes to send a prescription over the internet.

So, the only ones getting rich are the vendors. Imagine that. Thank you government for mandating a completely unnecessary and economically burdensome idea that someday we'll all have to ePrescribe. Idiots.

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Our overall average income as a profession of $93.8K seems kind of low compared to our overall average optometry school debt of $112-132K for 2007 averaged for all schools by ASCO.

BTW, the Wolfram Alpha isn't a search engine, it's a knowledge engine. Words mean things, you know. From what I can tell, it looks like a new way to get answers for math class and looking up stocks and stuff.

Hey, they list the chemical formula for BAK and Travatan. It's fun to play.

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Yup, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Ophthalmic vendors think we optometrists are so stupid. Just because we picked this profession, they think we are prone to making poor financial choices just like some people are accident prone.

Any of you vendors seeking to do insurance billing for me are wasting your time. All I need is my practice management software and Apex EDI. It's as automated as can be. Most of the vision insurances have their own website for authorization and billing, and then I use Apex EDI for my BlueCross, Medicaid, DMBA, and other miscellaneous insurance companies. (You can do Medicare also, but I am disinclined to participate with them.)

Apex EDI works great. It's fast and easy. And I don't need no stinking slick Rick to be some unnecessary middle man. It's cheap too. I pay 43 cents per claim, less than a postage stamp these days. I also pay the extra $20 a month for the ERAs and Electronic Tools which make my life a lot easier, so it's worth it.

Call up Apex EDI and tell them I sent you. Use my Champions Code (sales code) to get a better deal: Champ148. I use it in my practice (VisionHealth EyeCare PLLC), and you can use it in yours without the growing cottage cheese industry of Walmart insurance billing middle men.

[Note to Slick Ricks: Any more "comments" made by you to advertise your middle man services will be marked as Spam and deleted. Do us all a favor and go con some other profession.]

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Considering that around 25-30% of my patients are Spectera and Davis, this is going to cause me a big headache. Now I'll have to get internet access so I can bill them on their website. Then I'll have to figure out what my privider ID and password are. Oh, and it takes a lot of time, probably an average of 10 minutes per patient, to figure out stupid exam benefits. Now that W-M won't be billing them for me, they probably aren't going to volunteer to find out the benefit information for me either. Oh, and most of these vision plans don't even reimburse the full amount of what many Walmart doctors charge. So we're going to have to increase our work and probably recoup less.

Most impacting is that my accounts receivable is going to skyrocket. It's already bad enough dealing with BlueCross and their incomprehensible way of figuring out who has routine eye exam coverage and if so does that include a contact lens evaluation and what their copay is and does the deductible apply or not. Now to add more insurances that I can't trust to pay me what I'm expecting and pay it in a timely manner…I'm just sick of it.

I hate insurance! Seriously, who ever came up with the idea of vision insurance should be sent to Guantanamo for domestic terrorism towards eye doctors- oh, wait, that facility is closing…so, maybe we'll just give that person a really stern warning and then give them food stamps.
I don't know if I'm going to re-credential with Davis. Getting through their phone tree takes longer than doing the actual exam!

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Also I see that Walmartod.com's interactivity has been transformed from a bulletin board to a Facebook-like community. Looks pretty neat. I still can't get logged in, but I hope to join in…someday.

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Wow, I guess we Mormons should be thrilled that it took him three years to visit our leaders. And what's laughable is that the only "solution" to "climate change" that The Left can come up with is increased taxes and higher energy costs. Nice.

Mormons as a whole consistently vote conservative. Personally, I can't believe our leaders even granted him an audience, and further I can't believe they turned off the lights at Temple Square for Earff Hour! We stand strong against gay marriage in Kalifornia, but then we appease with leaders of a cloaked fascist movement to take away our God-given rights? I think someone has some 'splaning to do!!

You'll notice that he met with our PR dept to give his schpeel. I'll bet the PR department would meet with Lilburn Boggs if they thought it could remotely help with PR.

Algore, go home. We Mormons already know that we humans, made in God's image, are the stewards over the Earff. No one is out there saying we should pollute rivers, lakes, and streams or cut down every tree in all the forests! God has provided this earth for our use and enjoyment to further His purposes. All this "green" stuff is a diversion to tax us into communism, and God does not approve of communism. The whole reason we are here on Earth is to exercise our free agency and have joy. The Global Warming-err,..Cooling…I-mean-Climate-Change folks seek to destroy both.

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Their shrill vituperation and gnashing of teeth doesn't change the fact the practicing as an optometrist inside a Wal-Mart Vision Center is an awesome way to spend your career.

So, those of you who come to this blog from OD Wire. Go away. I've heard your abusiveness before*.

For you students out there considering a career in optometry, check out my article on how you could become a successful Wal-Mart optometrist also.

*(By the way, I am not inferring that all the comments in the above linked-to-posts are abusive. I deleted most of those.)

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Uintah and Ouray dancers at an indoor youth pow wow.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Department of Health says the state's American Indians are disproportionally affected by chronic health problems such as diabetes and asthma.

A report released Thursday shows more than 11 percent of the state's American Indian population has diabetes. The average for all Utahns is about 6 percent.

Rates of asthma and smoking among American Indians are also above the state average.

The report says Utah's American Indian population also has lower rates of health care coverage, prenatal care and physical activity.

American Indians make up about 1.7 percent of the state population.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

The AP doesn't seem to cite their source, but I think the original report is found here (pdf), and it includes these important bullet points:

• Partner with tribes to obtain grant funding to benefit American Indians;
• and Eliminate racial health disparities.

You would think that an AP reporter investigating this state report might be a little curious why this could be. Because the AP is liberal, the only answer acceptable to them is that we discriminate against Native Americans and that we aren't spending enough money.

The real reason would be to look the Native American population in Utah itself. The Uintah and Ouray Reservation has a small population- just over 3000, and about half live within the reservation. In fact, most Utah tribes are small. With such a limited gene pool in each community, you are going to get a lot of people with the same health risks.

So you will have to excuse me if I don't join the liberal's hysterics in a made up outrage.

Me (far right) at the May 2003 indoor youth pow wow in Fort Duchesne, UT.

To a degree, I think this happens already since Native Americans are encouraged to get on Medicaid/Medicare if they qualify. The IHS budget is so low that they depend heavily on income from Medicare/Medicaid. Of course, I would argue the IHS budget is low because of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976 that allowed one government healthcare agency (IHS) to bill another (CMS).)

Anyway, I just wanted to highlight this liberal tactic promoted by the Drive-by Media that calls attention to some pretended outrage and lays the blame on discrimination and not enough government spending when the real problem is neither. The facts are that the smaller the genetic variation, the more probable that certain health conditions will occur among that population.

For fun, here is a video of my boy dancing to the beat at an indoor pow wow on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation back in May 2003.

Here is another angle (he's soo cute!):

By the way, for those of you not interested in reading the rest of my website, I lived in or next door to an American Indian reservation for over 20 years. I worked as a Public Health Service optometrist at the Blackfeet Community Hospital in Browning, MT for two years. Everybody admits that there are problems on the reservation, but throwing more tax payer dollars at it will never help. Seriously, if that were the answer, wouldn't we have a utopia by now? LBJ started the War on Poverty in 1964, and it has been a 45 year quagmire. Let's try conservative solutions for a change! Policy makers need to listen to the voices of conservatives, like David Yeagley, a descendant of Bad Eagle. And Rush, Sean, Glenn, and Ann.

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The retail clinic era is over, and … pharmacy-based clinics are doomed to fail.
Corporations are finding out what primary care doctors already know: it's hard to make money only doing office visits.

Ophthalmologists make bank doing procedures. I guess the problem with the retail medical clinic is that the doctor is paid so much. I guess optical shops are lucky that optometrists aren't as high up on the whole pay scale totem pole.

I have to wonder about the optometric profession, though. The student loan debt percentage delta outpaces optometrist's pre-tax net percentage delta. How much longer will anybody want to apply for optometry school?

I guess we need Obama to bailout the optometry schools. Socialized medicine, here we come. Thanks for reading, comrades.

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Rush is always right. I would have said, "Obama is going to fail, and I want everyone to see that he fails because he is a liberal and so are his policies; therefore, stop voting for democrats!"

But Rush is more succinct and combined those three phrases into one simple sentence.

Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the answer to your problems, government is the problem!" The Obama administration and current liberal controlled Senate and House are speedily trying to turn America into a socialist/communist nation. We hear the Big Media incredulously ask, "So, you want Obama to fail, and you want the economy to collapse?"

Um…Obama will fail, and I want everyone to see that it's because of his policies that the economy is collapsing. Capitalism and freedom, as set up by the Founding Fathers of our nation, is what drove the U.S.A. to be a super power.

Our nation's big government/social agenda problems started out because of two things:

1. Originally, the founding fathers only wanted land owners to vote. They knew government decisions would directly effect people with "skin in the game." Now every bum on the street can cast their vote for who ever will promise government handouts.
2. The 17th Amendment. Why do we have our House congressmen voted in by people of each state and the Senators also voted by the people of each state. The founding Fathers meant for the Senators to be elected only by each State's legislature. This would truly insulate them from public opinion polls.

These two factors in combination have lead to elected officials promising tax dollars, our money, for causes that we wouldn't support on our own. I would never fund abortions. I would never pay for some other person's health care- they can pay for their own! I would never pay people not to work. I would never loan money to people who have no hope of repaying it. Yet, here we have it.

And it's only going to get worse, comrades.

By the way, stop voting for democrats and start electing conservatives who will dismantle big government so that we can keep our money. The more money we have, the more money we can donate to our charities which can provide soup and a cot to homeless people- temporarily. So called "trickle down economics" rewards those who are willing to work harder and smarter. It also works better than Soviet Union economics.

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I'm getting a little burned out of blogging. I'm thinking that I'd rather spend my time with my wife and kids. For now I'll keep posting here and there- sporadically. If you'd like to buy the domain name from me, make me an offer. It's a pretty good URL, and site visitors average 60 per day and page views average 105 (or 21,900 and 38,325 per year respectively). And if you go to Google and search "optometry blog" you will see that optoblog.com pops up number one.

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What is a good name for an eye doctor?
Iris.

How come optometry students are so dumb compared to med school students?
Because they only ever get C's on their tests.

How come eye doctors are so smart?
Because they were good pupils.

What did the myopic eye say to the nose?
I'm watching you!

What did the GP say to the eyeball at a party?
I'll contact you later.

What is an eye doctor's favorite type of makeup?
Masclera.

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So, I wonder if patients should be forced to do the same thing? I guess it won't matter soon anyway because the way things are heading we'll all be working for the government. Thanks for reading, comrade.

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