PECAA Secures Financial Backing From RevOptix
Independent Doctor Alliance Group, Professional Eye Care Associates of America (PECAA) has secured financial backing from RevOptix, a newly formed eye care practice solutions provider.
PECAA management and staff will stay in place and previous shareholders in PECAA have rolled their ownership interest into a minority stake in RevOptix.
“RevOptix has a compelling long term vision to develop services and work with third party vendors to advance patient care and increase the value of eye care practices,” according to PECAA founder, Lance Anderson, OD, who will serve on the RevOptix corporate board.RevOptix delivers innovative products and services with exceptional customer support to eye care practices. RevOptix recently announced a significant investment in RevolutionEHR, the leading provider of cloud-based practice management and electronic health record systems for the optometric community. According to executive chairman, Gunnar Bjorklund, “RevolutionEHR and PECAA will continue to operate their businesses independently.”
PECAA was formed in 2006 by a group of 12 practicing optometrists with the mission of protecting and promoting independent eye care professionals through innovative programs, business services, and marketing strategies. PECAA is considered by many within the industry to be one of the premier independent doctor alliance groups in the United States. Currently, PECAA has around 1,700 member doctors practicing in over a thousand locations in 46 states. PECAA growth plans are to have 1,600 locations in all 50 states by the end of 2015.
“The financial backing and resources from RevOptix will allow us to accelerate the speed at which we can deliver our wide range of services and support to our 1700 member doctors,“ said PECAA COO, Chris Millet. “These resources also allow us to pursue opportunities with both existing and new vendors within the eye care space”.
PECAA is unique in the industry in that it offers a wide range of in-house services and programs to its members beyond just cost of goods discount savings. PECAA offerings include vendor partnership programs, the IncentivEYES® loyalty rebate program which paid out over $820,000 to its membership in the 1st quarter of 2014, Member Business Analysis financial consulting and evaluation services, Digital Marketing services, SuccessTrack financial benchmarking, a 3-day annual meeting event, annual business symposium events, on-demand continuing education programs, optical staff and optician training, optical merchandising workshops held throughout the US, and a newly formed billing and coding service. PECAA employs 19 people, the majority of which are based in Oregon, and intends to hire at least 8 more in 2015 in order to continue to provide a high level of personal service to its members.
“Independent Eye Care Providers are feeling more and more pressure from a number of factors concurrent in the eye care market. These factors include higher costs of products, increased competition from vertically integrated big box retailers, and the continued growth of online optical retail sales in the US,” according to Dr. Lance Anderson. “We feel it is critical for our members that we expand our services with a mission of ‘by doctors for doctors’ and offering best in class products from our vendor partners. We will strive to provide the resources going forward to allow independent eye care business owners the ability to compete on a more level playing field in the future.”
View article reported by Vision Monday – November 18th, 2014
