Buying an Optometry Practice
First, Who a State Lets Own It
Optometry is a licensed clinical profession, and some states restrict who may own a practice under the corporate-practice doctrine. New York is the clearest: only licensees may organize the professional entity, and unlicensed practice is a felony. Texas is the one usually described wrongly, because it regulates control rather than ownership: since 2023 it registers the management company itself, which files annually with the state. Where the doctrine applies, a non-OD buyer uses a management services organization, so an optometrist owns the clinical entity while your company owns the brand and the operations. Confirm which regime a state runs first, because it decides whether you buy the practice or structure around it.
Why Searchers Look at Optometry
Eye care is recurring and demographic: patients come back on an exam cycle, an aging population needs more of it, and the practice sells both a medical service and the eyewear that follows the exam. That dual model, clinical fees plus an optical dispensary, gives an optometry practice two revenue engines most professional practices lack. The category is fragmented and consolidating, with vision-focused DSOs and private equity actively buying groups, which keeps exits visible and, at the small end, keeps sellers reasonable. A narrow buyer pool in the ownership-restricted states is a reason the economics are worth understanding, not a reason they are bad.
What Optometry Practices Trade For
The market is bimodal. Independent single-OD practices trade on SDE to individual buyers, and the trade's practice-management press puts most of them at 2x to 3x SDE, with SDE itself running 25 to 35 percent of revenue. The same press puts EBITDA multiples at 3x to 6x, higher for large multi-location groups, and PE-backed platform headlines run above that on a basis no publisher of sold small-business data prints. A searcher buying one or a few offices is in the SDE world, so anchor there and treat platform headlines as a different market. Where a specific practice lands inside its band is mostly the revenue mix the next section covers.
Medical Eye Care and the Optical
Two things move an optometry multiple: how much of the practice is medical eye care versus routine refractions, and how the optical dispensary performs. Medical exposure (managing glaucoma, diabetic eye disease, dry eye, and minor procedures where the state's scope allows) is stickier and better reimbursed than a vision exam for glasses, and buyers pay for it. The optical is a retail business bolted to a clinic: capture rate (how many exam patients buy eyewear there), margins, and managed-vision-plan mix all matter, and a practice that refers its eyewear elsewhere is leaving the second engine idle. Read revenue by service line, by payer, and by optical capture before crediting the multiple.
What to Verify in Diligence
The record to assemble before the offer holds:
- State ownership rules and any MSO structure the deal requires
- Revenue split by medical eye care, routine exams, and optical
- Optical capture rate, dispensary margins, and lab arrangements
- Payer and managed-vision-plan mix, with reimbursement trends
- The selling OD's production share and post-sale continuity
- Scope-of-practice limits in the state for the services billed
- Equipment age (lanes, imaging, edging) and the real capex ahead
Financeability Notes
Optometry practices finance under SBA 7(a), and the FOIA file's median acquisition loan sits well within searcher range, with recurring demand and a real optical asset base that lenders read favorably. Expect the underwriting to weigh doctor continuity and, in ownership-restricted states, to require the MSO structure be in place and reviewed. Model debt service on earnings net of a market salary for an associate OD if the seller is also the producing doctor, and net of the capex the exam lanes and imaging genuinely need. Managed-vision-plan reimbursement pressure is the margin risk to underwrite, so read the payer trend, not just the trailing number.
Terms in This Industry
Frame board turns
How many times a year the optical inventory on the wall sells through and is replaced.
Optical dispensary
The retail side of an optometry practice: the frames, lenses, and contacts beside the exam.
Medical versus routine eye care
Eye disease billed to health insurance, against routine exams and glasses paid another way.
Vision plan mix
The share of exams paid by vision plans, which set both the fee and the frame margin.
Billing number sale prohibition
The federal rule that a Medicare number is never part of what changes hands.
Therapeutic pharmaceutical agent authority
The state grant of prescribing scope that any federal registration can only follow, never precede.
Eyeglass Rule
The federal rule handing every patient their glasses prescription unasked, with proof kept three years.
What the Data Says
Optometry's practice-management press puts most practices at 2 to 3 times seller's discretionary earnings, with SDE itself running 25 to 35 percent of revenue, and EBITDA multiples at 3 to 6 times, higher for large multi-location groups. The same account gives a sale-price rule of thumb of 40 to 80 percent of one year's revenue, a far wider spread than the earnings bands and worth treating as the looser number it is.
Source: Review of Optometric Business, what a practice is worth
The census records 22,501 offices of optometrists with paid employees as of 2023, while federal wage data puts the optometrist median at $136,570 for 2025. The pair explains the market's shape: tens of thousands of small practices whose scarcest input is the doctor whose name is on the door.
Source: Census County Business Patterns, offices of optometrists (2023)
New York holds that a business corporation may not employ a licensee to deliver a professional service, and treats unlicensed practice of a profession as a felony, so the practice entity itself has to be owned by optometrists. A non-optometrist buying there is buying the business around the practice rather than the practice, which is a structure decided before the letter of intent.
Source: New York State Education Department, Corporate Practice of the Professions
Enter earnings to apply this industry's cited band.
A sanity check against asking prices, not a valuation.
Holding a live deal in this industry? Underwrite it with the comps, cited band, and charge-off rate pre-loaded.
Compare bands across industries in the cited multiple bands by industry.
Who Else Is Buying in This Industry
- MyEyeDr · Vienna, VA
A Vienna, Virginia optometry consolidator running 952-plus locations and targeting 1,000, acquiring independent optometrists' practices while keeping the doctors and their clinical autonomy.
- Lumina Vision Partners · 2026 · A 28-location optometry group across Arizona and Texas, founded in 2020, extending MyEyeDr into the Southwest.
- Riata Capital Group · Dallas, TX
A Dallas buy-and-build investor whose AEG Vision platform owns and operates over 500 optometry practices, expanding through the acquisition of regional eyecare groups.
- AEG Vision (500-practice milestone) · 2025 · The optometry platform crossed 500 practices and 600 optometrists, still buying regional groups.
Buyers is the shelf these come from, ordered by who closed something most recently.
How Big This Market Is
There are about 22,501 businesses in this industry. 11,680 of them (52%) have 5 to 99 employees: the band big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. Most of the rest are owner-operators with a job rather than a business to hand over.
Census County Business Patterns (2023). How often they change hands, and where they concentrate, is in Market Depth.
Who the Law Lets Own This
A handful of states, including New York and Texas, restrict non-optometrist ownership of a practice under corporate-practice doctrines; most do not.
How buyers structure around it: In restricted states, a management services organization separates the business you own from the licensed clinical entity; confirm the rule state by state.
Licensing is set state by state and changes, so confirm the current rule with the state board and your attorney before it shapes an offer. Every trade with a recorded rule is on Ownership & License Rules.
What It Costs to Replace the Owner
The multiples above are quoted on SDE, which adds the owner's pay back into earnings, so they hold only if you do the owner's job. Hire someone instead and the going rate for the role comes back out. For this trade that is usually the administrator of a clinic or care facility, paid a median of $123,860 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $371,580 off what the business is worth to you.
Medical and health services managers, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025), national, all industries, before payroll taxes and benefits. Every role, and the same arithmetic worked end to end, is in Manager Wages.
The Numbers That Run This Business
- Medical eye care share against routine exams
- Optical capture rate and dispensary margin
- Exams per day per doctor
- Managed-vision-plan mix and reimbursement trend
- Active patients and recall effectiveness