Study Finds Soft Contact Lens Patients Significantly More Profitable than Glasses-Only Wearers
A new study commissioned by the Contact Lens Institute (CLI) finds that soft contact lens patients generate considerably more annual profit for eye care practices than patients who wear glasses exclusively. The study estimates that contact lens prescribing produces a profitability advantage ranging from 29% to 86%, depending on the type of vision correction being compared. Researchers analyzed four years of anonymized financial and operational data from 20 U.S. eye care practices, with each practice providing information on 30 patients. The analysis incorporated not only revenue from products and professional services, but also expenses such as staff compensation, professional fees, and chair time. The resulting average annual customer-level profit was $436 for spherical contact lens patients, $453 for toric patients, and $485 for multifocal patients. By comparison, single-vision glasses patients generated an average of $244, while progressive-lens patients generated $376.
One of the study’s most important implications is that it challenges a common perception within eye care: that contact lens patients may be less profitable because they require additional chair time, follow-up care, staff involvement, and product-related expenses. At first glance, those additional costs might seem to reduce the financial value of a contact lens patient compared with a glasses-only patient. However, the researchers found that the additional revenue associated with contact lens wear more than compensates for those costs. Professor Philip Morgan, one of the study’s researchers, points to several possible explanations. Contact lens wearers generally have recurring purchases, may visit the practice more frequently for examinations or lens-related care, and may create additional opportunities for ancillary purchases. Consequently, the profitability of a contact lens patient should not be evaluated solely on the margin generated from selling a box of lenses. Instead, practices should consider the total customer lifetime value of the patient relationship.
The study is particularly significant because many eye care practices apparently do not have a reliable method for determining how financially valuable their contact lens patients actually are. Earlier CLI research found that more than half of eye care practices do not quantify the business impact of their contact lens patients at all. Even among practices that attempt to measure it, CLI says that the relative profitability of contact lens patients has historically been underestimated. This means that some practices may make business decisions based on assumptions rather than actual patient-level financial data. The new research provides evidence that practices should instead examine their own numbers—including professional fees, chair time, staff labor, product costs, examination frequency, and secondary purchases—to determine the true economic contribution of contact lens patients. In other words, the profitability question isn’t simply “How much money do we make selling contact lenses?” but rather “How profitable is the entire contact lens patient relationship compared with other forms of vision correction?”
The findings could also encourage eye care professionals to reconsider how they approach patients who could benefit from both glasses and contact lenses. CLI’s executive director, Stan Rogaski, argues that the data should encourage practices to reconsider their approaches to providing patients with the best possible vision correction options. Importantly, the study isn’t suggesting that practices should replace glasses with contact lenses simply because contact lenses can be more profitable. Rather, the argument is that contact lenses should not be overlooked because of an assumption that they are financially unattractive to the practice. Patients may value contact lenses for convenience, lifestyle, appearance, and visual needs, and the study suggests they are willing to pay for those benefits. Providing both contact lens and spectacle options can therefore potentially benefit the patient while also creating a stronger long-term business relationship for the practice.
Ultimately, the study represents an important piece of evidence for the contact lens industry’s ongoing effort to encourage greater contact lens adoption and prescribing. CLI describes it as the first-ever analysis of contact lens profitability in the United States, coming roughly 25 years after a widely cited London Business School study examined similar questions across five European markets. The new research suggests that contact lenses can provide practices with meaningful economic advantages—not merely through the sale of lenses, but through the broader recurring relationship that contact lens wear creates between patients and eye care professionals. CLI plans to publish the complete findings later in 2026 as part of its See Tomorrow research series, which should provide additional detail beyond these topline results. For optometry practices, the central takeaway is straightforward: contact lens patients may be significantly more valuable than conventional profitability assumptions suggest, and practices that have not been measuring that value may be leaving an important source of revenue and patient engagement underappreciated.
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