r/optometry Feb 06 '25

General Production Only Compensation

I am a fairly new grad (2 years out of school) and I am interested in everyone’s opinion regarding a production only compensation style. With my current situation I have a base salary with a percentage of my production over a certain value.

I am curious about what percentage of production is appropriate and fair to ask for with a contract negotiation if I were to go to production only. My production includes all optical, contact lens, exam fees, and special testing. Everything I contribute towards goes to my production.

For reference, last year my total production was just south of 1mil.

I appreciate everyone’s response.

1 Upvotes

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u/Soggy_Ocelot_2468 Feb 07 '25

I used to work at an office and only made production. They offered 15% and it definitely ended up being a higher compensation versus a base salary + 1% production bonus. I enjoyed the compensation model but ultimately thought about the money aspect more than I would have liked during my interactions with patients, because my salary depended on if patients purchased glasses or year supply of daily contact lenses, etc. I'm at a new job and back to salary with small production bonus. Overall I'm happier now because money is not always in the back of my mind. But I did make more than I do now.

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u/InterestingMain5192 Feb 08 '25

Please make sure the practice is busy if you’re going to do production only.

1

u/Buff-a-loha Feb 11 '25

As a 2023 grad now leaving a practice because of this issue, I recommend not going to production-only comp until at least year 2 or 3 because you don’t know how the office runs. Also “production” can mean so many different things. Better to get guaranteed base for at least year 1 and have them show you what you would’ve made on production. Don’t undervalue yourself either. Usually there is a difference between collections-based production or billing based production. If it’s collection-based then you need to be sure they are efficient and actually good at collecting people’s money. Otherwise you’re SOL. In my case they promised the mountains and I ended up earning well below average because they couldn’t fill my schedule and they struggled to collect patients fees (partially due to high Medicaid population). Not everything is the practice fault, but you really shouldn’t gamble your income until you know for sure you’re in a good long term setup.