What Can Your Practice Expect in 2010?

I am going to use my December blog posts to provide you with some ideas designed to help plan for 2010.

Let’s start by looking back over the last 18 months.

Although I remain very positive about our profession and our country, there is no point in sugar coating what has happened. The US has just gone through the worst recession since the 1930s.

At this point, it appears that retail eyewear sales will be down 6-10% nationally for 2009 as compared to 2008.

This decline may be a little surprising as 2009 actually started out pretty well for many ODs as consumer spending for eyecare services and eyewear products was surprisingly steady for the first half of the year.

It now appears that was a little bit of ‘fool’s gold’. Workers who were worried about losing their jobs, and their vision plans, came in earlier than usual for their eyecare and eyewear.

If your revenues were up the first half of the year and down this fall, that’s partly because the business generated by those vision plan patients ran out of steam around August and September.

Dental Practices Are Down Too

OD’s are not the only ones feeling the pinch. According to a recent article, Dental Economics/Levin Group Practice Survey, in the November 2009 issue of Dental Economics, revenues are down 2.7% so far this year for the average dental practice.

What Is The Outlook For Your Practice In 2010?

There is some light at the end of the tunnel. The stock market is up 60% from its recent lows and the rise in GDP for Q3 signaled the technical end of the recession.

However, analysts are predicting a slow recovery for the retail economy. I agree.

My expectation is that the performance of your practice in the first half of 2010 will be a mirror image of what you did in the last half of 2009. Here’s why.

The main reason is because the Federal Government expects unemployment to rise slightly into the first half of 2010. I don’t look for consumer spending to increase until your neighbors, and your patients, feel better about holding onto their jobs.

If the financial crash of 2008 did anything, it scared people into holding onto their wallets.

Consumers have become more debt averse as workers worry about keeping their jobs and baby boomers try to repair retirement plans that were devastated by the stock market decline.

Also, the decline in real estate values has wiped out the ‘easy money’ that came out in home equity loans.

Men are disturbed not by the things that happen to them, but by their opinion of the things that happen. — Epictetus, Greek Philosopher 55 AD

If your practice revenues were even or up in 2009, I congratulate you! Please email and let me hear what you did and how you did it.

If your practice suffered a decline in production this year, my advice is to accept what happened, put that behind you and don’t beat yourself up because you had a bad year. You were not alone.

You and I can do very little to impact the US economy. But, you can do a lot to improve the financial performance of your own practice.

When times are tough, we need to focus on what we can control and that is what I am going to write about in my next blog post — Planning for a more profitable 2010.

Agree with this blog? Disagree? Have a comment or question of your own? Click here to send me an e-mail.

Disclaimer: The information and opinions contained on this site are for discussion purposes only and are NOT intended to serve as legal, accounting or investment advice. ©2009 Jerry Hayes, OD. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.