Dispelling myopia management myths
David Kading, OD, of Specialty Eye in Washington, spoke with Optometry 360 about his recent presentation at the American Academy of Optometry 2025 Annual Meeting. He outline 4 myths that need to be addressed in myopia care and management.
David Kading, OD :
Hi, my name is Dave Kading. I practice in Seattle, Washington. I’m also the host of The Myopia Podcast. I had the great pleasure of talking alongside Dr. Kevin Chan at the American Academy of Optometry about different myths that we have in the myopia management world and how we can dispel them and get more people doing more myopia management.
The first one is that myopia management is not needed because myopia isn’t a disease. Well, we’ve dispelled that myth. That is definitely dispelled in the literature. We know that the number of people with stretched-out eyeballs has a high risk, and many of those patients develop glaucoma and retinal detachments and so forth. If we have a patient whose tissue is changing at an abnormal rate, like we do with glaucoma and macular degeneration, like we do with cancer, and like we do with myopia, we definitely can say that it is disease and it is a stretching condition that is abnormal. We must do something to stop it.
One of the things that we do to stop it, and the second myth is that orthokeratology is too hard. Well, we’ve got other great treatments that are out there. Ortho-k remains a really, really good treatment for our patients with myopia management. With Ks, HVID, and the refraction of the patient, if we just order lenses based off of that, the studies show that we can be over 80% successful with our first set of lenses, 95% to 96% successful if we have to make a change, utilizing a consultant to help us make that change. I wish I could be that successful with other types of contact lenses. But with orthokeratology, these patients love it. It’s a great option for parents. Like the other treatments that are out there, certainly the one that we should be considering in our myopia management toolbox.
The next two is that we don’t have enough time and that it’s not profitable for us. Well, if you don’t have enough time, it’s probably because you’re busy doing other things that maybe aren’t as profitable, maybe aren’t as rewarding. Maybe you’re taking an insurance that you maybe don’t want to take anymore because it’s not reimbursing you the way that you should. Consider dropping that insurance and having those patients either become private pay or they could go see somebody that’s down the street from you. I’m sure they would be happy to see those patients. It would free up time for you. Then you could see the patients.
How to be profitable? Well, figure out the revenue per encounter. That’s the total dollar amount divided by the number of encounters that you saw. That’s your revenue per encounter. Take that times the number of times you’re going to see a patient over the course of the year. Then that would be your global fee that you could have. You can divide that by 12 and patients can pay you on a monthly basis for it. That would be a subscription type of model. If you do that, then myopia management is at least as profitable as every other area of your practice and a really, really great thing to bring in.
This is Dave Kading from The Myopia Podcast. Thank you for joining me and hearing about these myths that we have out there. We sure enjoyed giving this presentation, Kevin and I, at the American Academy of Optometry. Thank you for joining me.
