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July 16, 2026 — 5:00am
Optometry in Australia has undergone a dramatic change. Once dominated by independent practices and small partnerships, it is now concentrated in the hands of a few large corporate chains – including Specsavers, OPSM, Bupa Optical, Bailey Nelson and Oscar Wylee – that employ 75 per cent of practising optometrists.
Some optometrists working for the major corporations claim their employers are prioritising profits over health, and they say they are being pressured to hit sales targets, rush consultations and turn away people with eye infections and more serious medical conditions during peak spending periods.
Herald health reporter Rachel Rasker has reviewed more than 80 internal reports and correspondence that expose the corporate business models of optometry brands appearing to sell out patients. The documents reveal numerous incidents of senior management threatening pay cuts or performance reviews if optometrists fail to sell enough glasses to meet KPIs.
Other benchmarks foisted on staff included the number of appointments which resulted in a same-day sale of glasses and customers’ average spend, including add-ons such as sunglasses or premium lenses.
One chain went so far as to lionise a graduate optometrist with the highest Medicare billings at a corporate event. “They did a big drumroll,” a colleague told Rasker. “They crowned him MediKing, with celebratory music and cheering. They brought him up on stage, gave him a gift and asked him to say a few words on how to bill as high as possible.”
Helene Ly worked at both OPSM and Specsavers until she quit at the recommendation of her psychologist due to stress. She said when optometrists had to “constantly think about what we can do to keep our KPIs up to get management off our back, we don’t really have the best interests of the patient at heart.”
For a profession built on high-quality patient-centred care, the growing disconnect between corporations and some staff members has prompted 2600 optometrists to form a collective with the aim of unionising under the aegis of the Health Services Union.
The optometrists are not alone. Many health and allied professionals, including dentists and chemists, are feeling the tension between corporate imperatives and delivery of quality services, partly because a corporate business model is a retail model rather than a healthcare model.
Optometrists are bound by the same clinical and ethical obligations as other registered practitioners and are generally well regarded. Only 1 per cent of them have been the subject of complaints to the Australian Healthcare Practitioners Regulation Agency, compared with 1.7 per cent across all registered health practitioners.
Luke Arundel, chief clinical officer at Optometry Australia, the peak body representing practitioners and optometrist practice owners, said anecdotal evidence did not categorically prove KPIs were harming patients. “We’re a very safe profession,” he said.
AHPRA’s code of conduct requires optometrists to place patients’ interests first. But our investigation reveals that conflating commercial imperatives with professional standards carries a psychological burden for professionals forced to choose between profit and remaining true to their values – a shift in emphasis not without risk for the public and practitioners alike.
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