Optometry group: AI assessment or ops hire?

The median medical and health services manager in the United States earned $123,860 in May 2025 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, page last modified August 2026). Add benefits and the all-in cost passes $175,000 a year. If you manage an optometry group and the owner keeps saying the practice needs "someone who can sort out the AI", that is the number sitting behind the sentence. The assessment that tells you what that someone should actually do costs under 1% of it.

What the hire really costs

BLS puts the 2025 median pay for medical and health services managers at $59.55 an hour, or $123,860 a year, across 640,400 jobs (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wage data, page last modified August 2026). That is wages only. In June 2026, benefits made up 30.0% of total compensation for private-industry workers, with total compensation at $46.89 per hour worked and benefits at $14.07 (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, released September 2026).

Treat that 30% as a rough load for this role. Wages are then 70% of the total, so the arithmetic is:

• $123,860 ÷ 0.70 = about $176,900 a year all-in
• $59.55 ÷ 0.70 = about $85 an hour all-in
• Half-time at the same rate: about $88,500 a year

Two caveats. The BLS figure covers every kind of health services manager, including hospital administrators, so a six-clinician optometry group may well pay less for an operations lead. And the 30% benefits share is an all-industry private-sector average, not a figure for your region or role. Swap in your own offer letter numbers before you use any of this in a board paper. So what for you: the order of magnitude is what matters here. A full-time operations hire is a six-figure annual commitment, and a mistake in the job description repeats every month.

What the assessment costs, in hours of that hire

Take the top of our fee range, about $1,200 (£995). At $85 an hour all-in, that is roughly 14 hours of a median health services manager's time, or 0.68% of one year's cost. The assessment is not a substitute for that person. It is a cheap way to find out what the person should be asked to do.

What you receive is a written report scoring your practice on four CARE Framework™ dimensions (Clinical workflow, Administrative burden, Readiness and Economics), with a 90-day roadmap ranked by return. It takes about two weeks and 2.5 to 3 hours of your own time. We take no vendor commissions and no referral fees, which is why "hire a person, not software" is a possible finding. So what for you: you are not choosing between a person and a report. You are deciding whether to spend 14 hours' worth before you commit to 2,000.

When the hire should come first

Frankly, there are practices where the assessment is the wrong first move. If your two-week log already shows a standing load of repetitive work that no tool will touch, such as chasing paper referrals, covering reception sickness, or reconciling three scheduling systems, you do not need a score to tell you that you are short of hands. Three signs point that way:

• The same two people absorb the overtime, week after week.
• The tasks are varied, judgment-heavy and spread across systems.
• Nobody can write down the current process because it changes by day and by clinician.

Software cannot be pointed at a process that lives in people's heads. Writing the process down is useful whichever way you go, and it is check 8 in our ten-check AI readiness list.

When the assessment should come first

The assessment earns its fee when the load is repetitive, describable and spread across several people, so that nobody holds a full job's worth of it. Recall calls, appointment reminders and insurance eligibility checks fit that description. In that case a hire could be the wrong shape of solution: you would pay $176,900 for a person to do work a configured tool could take over, or you would buy a tool and have nobody accountable for it. The score tells you which, and the roadmap tells you what to do in what order. For the fee breakdown specific to your profession, see what the assessment covers for an optometry practice.

There is a third answer, and it is common: both. A part-time operations lead who owns the pilot, supported by one well-chosen tool, often costs less than a full-time hire and gives the owner an accountable name. The report states which of the three your numbers support.

A one-page decision test for this month

You can run this before spending anything.

1. Pick the one admin task you would most like off your team's plate.
2. Have every person who touches it log minutes for two weeks.
3. Multiply weekly hours by 52 and by your own staff cost per hour.
4. Compare the result with $176,900, or with your own quote for the hire.

If one task alone approaches the cost of the hire, the case for a person is strong. If it is a fraction, the case for fixing that task with a tool, a process change or an outside score is stronger. Frankly, the owner who has been dismissing your recommendations is far more likely to move when the sheet shows a weekly hour count and a dollar total than when it shows an opinion. If you would rather have an independent number, book a free 20-minute discovery call. We will tell you whether an assessment makes sense before you pay anything. The questions to put to any outside adviser are in five checks before hiring an AI consultant.

Common questions

Should an optometry group hire an operations manager or commission an AI assessment first?

If you cannot yet say how many staff hours go on one repetitive task each week, get that number first, by your own log or an outside assessment. Hire first only when the log shows a standing load that needs a person.

Does the BLS figure apply to my group?

It is a national median across all health services managers, so a smaller group may pay less. Your own offer figures decide.

Related: AI readiness: 10 checks in one afternoon · AI audit cost for optometry practices · AI consultant for a PT clinic: 5 checks