The Australian College of Optometry hopes a new name, website and strategy will end confusion for practitioners and patients, and help build better pathways and health outcomes for all.
What’s in a name? Well, plenty if you ask the Australian College of Optometry (ACO).
The Victoria institution has been around for 85 years but, incredibly, there is still a fair bit of misunderstanding about what the ACO does and its public health role in the state’s eye care sector.
And not just among many of the 50,000 patients it helps every year in its main Carlton facility, seven other metropolitan sites, and outreach clinics in close to 300 locations around Victoria.
Politicians and other key stakeholders – even people in health care – assume its main purpose is teaching optometry students or representing the profession as a peak body. Although the ACO’s early years centred on training, today 90% of the not-for-profit’s work is dedicated to delivering publicly funded care to the state’s most vulnerable people and its First Nations communities.
Making that clearer and creating a stronger identity is vital to helping those people understand what the organisation does, encouraging them to engage with its eye care services and creating better pathways for patients, says ACO director of operations Ms Kylie Harris, and Dr Josephine Li, general manager of Rural Victoria Eye Service (VES) and Outreach Programs.
A clearer, stronger identity would also help politicians and other key partners better understand what they are funding and why it is so important.
Which is why the organisation has announced an historic rebrand.
The ACO’s clinical and patient services, which make up the great majority of its work around the state, have been renamed as ACO Eye Health.
The plan was put forward as part of the ACO’s 2023-26 Strategic Plan and has involved all of its staff.
“The whole website redevelopment has been a critical part of it,” says Harris, “and we’ve involved our patients and teams across the organisation in terms of the final name.
“We ran a selection process and a voting process around that, the colours and the branding. We’ve tried to ensure that our staff have visibility and ownership of that.”
A media release announcing the January 2025 rebrand said the move was part of “a number of changes to strengthen our public health mission and improve understanding of our role as a community eye care provider”.
As part of the move, the ‘Australian College of Optometry’ will remain the legal business name, representing the entire organisation comprising professional development, research, membership and clinical services. ACO’s trusted certificate courses and CPD programs will remain under the familiar brand.
But when it comes to delivering optometry services, ACO Eye Health is the new name it’s going by.
Public health priority
Harris and Li say it can be difficult to make the connection with other health care professionals and even patients.
“It’s so important that those working in eye care and broader health services understand that ACO Eye Health’s purpose is to provide equitable, accessible, high-quality optometry care to the community,” says Harris. “We are a public health eyecare provider first and foremost.
“We work very closely with many community health organisations, but there will be ones that don’t know we exist.”
In addition to care delivered through ACO Eye Health’s network of Melbourne clinics, its Outreach team partners with a variety of other like-minded organisations across Melbourne and Victoria to reach the most vulnerable communities.
Through this outreach eye care program, thousands of individuals receive comprehensive eye tests and heavily subsidised or free glasses.
Those needing more detailed testing are referred to their local ACO Eye Health clinic.
“For example, if the patient was seen in the South-East region, they could be referred to Dandenong or Knox, and in rural Victoria, we will refer them to our rural VES practitioners,” says Dr Li.
Dr Li, who manages the team of 19 staff travelling about 50,000 kilometres each year to deliver this care, has experienced confusion around ACO’s name herself.
“Sometimes patients will say, ‘Oh, you’re from the college, are you? Are you a final-year student?’,” she says. “I say no, I’ve been around for about 20 years!
“There are situations where, because our name is so long, that all people can remember is that we’re the ‘college people’.”
Apart from confusion among health professionals, the not-for-profit is conscious that many of their patients struggle with health care literacy.
“Often they have limited English language skills, don’t know anything about eye care, may never have had an eye test, maybe fled their country as a refugee without their glasses, all sorts of scenarios,” says Harris.
“And the state government also has a very strong emphasis on building up First Nation eye care and facilitating equity.”
That often means delivering “more complex care to patients with more complex, challenging conditions”.
Adding to that challenge has been a lack of understanding about the ACO, what it is and what it does.
That meant some patients with vision issues had been missing out on ACO’s services and clinics.
“This affects patients who would not even understand our services, or where they are if they visited our website,” says Harris.
“The existing site doesn’t clearly outline the appointment booking process; for somebody who might have limited English, how do they know they’ve landed in the right place? Nor does the website really speak to eyecare. Our new site aims to makes the experience much easier for patients, and also our optometry, ophthalmology and other health care colleagues who refer to us.”
Work beyond the rebrand
The new identity, which will include a new logo and updated car fleet, will give ACO Eye Health a strong and clearer presence around the state and within the communities it serves.
It will also strengthen that presence with the politicians and other key partners so important to ongoing funding, says Harris.
She believes misconceptions about ACO and its role may have played a part in limiting funding to the organisation.
“We look after over 50,000 patients a year for a very good price for the Victorian Government,” she says. “And there’d be very few people in government who could name the ACO as the organisation that actually delivers that. When we’re talking to politicians and we say, you know, we’re from the Australian College of Optometry, sometimes they don’t appear very interested, because they don’t want to talk to a member college that they perceive as being very wealthy.
“We had a funding cut this year, and it was interesting as we ramped up our communications with politicians during that period to find that very few had any idea of what we do.”
The rebrand plans to address and conquer those misconceptions.
“It helps moving forward, because we need to clearly articulate the work we do in order to improve our service delivery models and establish additional revenue streams,” says Harris.
“Being able to speak to what we do very directly in our branding is an extremely useful tool when we’re talking to any partner that might become part of our story.”
But if the rebrand is indeed a very useful tool, it’s just one in ACO Eye Health’s growing toolkit.
Its strategy to make eye care more accessible in Victoria goes beyond a new website, a new logo, and a few new colours.
It is also about building more collaborative networks with better health outcomes beyond just eye care.
“A really big part of what we have planned for 2025 is how we leverage off the rebrand to engage better with the community,” says Harris.
“We’ve undertaken a full review of our VES services during 2024 that feeds into what our clinic network and services should look like going forward into 2030-2040.”
She says that will involve a huge amount of work with stakeholders on the ground to understand “exactly where those health hubs and vulnerable people are going to sit”.
It is about improving service delivery and making it more efficient by collaborating with other health professionals to best serve vulnerable patients.
“For example, we look after patients who have diabetes because they need to be managed for potential diabetic eye disease, but you also have podiatrists, dietitians and many other allied health and medical practitioners involved in the care of those with diabetes.
“So how do we position ourselves to be part of these evolving hubs caring for vulnerable communities.”
She says that is the most “exciting” part of the work ahead.
“We want to make sure that we’re in the right place at the right time and have the right networks to get there.”
Now they believe they also have the right name to help do that.
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