How To Calculate Your Optical Capture Rate, And What It’s Costing You

Every patient who leaves with a new prescription is going to buy glasses somewhere. Your capture rate is the share who buy them from you. It's one of the clearest signs of how well your exam room and your optical work together, and most practices have never put a number on it.

The Formula

Take the number of patients who bought eyewear from you last month and divide it by the number who left with a new prescription. If 100 patients got a new prescription and 55 of them bought from your optical, your capture rate is 55%.

Where Practices Usually Land

Commonly published figures put typical independent practices somewhere between 60% and 70%, with top-performing practices at 78% or higher. Your region and patient mix will move these a little, but if you're well under 60%, there's real money on the table.

What A Low Number Costs

Multiply the gap by your volume. A practice seeing 280 exams a month at 55% capture, with a $320 average sale, is leaving roughly $13,400 a month on the table compared to a practice at 70%. Not every exam produces a new prescription, so the realistic figure is a bit lower, but the size of it surprises most owners.

Why Patients Walk Out

When your other numbers look healthy, low capture almost always comes down to the few minutes between the exam chair and the optical. The patient is told where optical is instead of being taken there. The doctor says new glasses might help instead of naming the lens that will fix the glare they mentioned. Or the first price they see feels high, with no package or payment option to soften it.

Try This Week

Have the doctor recommend a specific lens in the chair, then walk the patient to the optician and hand off the prescription in person. Count capture again in 30 days.

Measure It Monthly

Capture moves quickly once the handoff changes, which makes it one of the most satisfying numbers to track. Check it at the same time every month alongside your no-show and denial rates, and you'll see where the practice is improving before it shows up in collections.

Want to know what your capture rate is costing you? Run the free checkup and Iris will work it out in about two minutes.