RCA releases first State of Retina Care report

Retina Consultants of America (RCA) recently released its first State of Retina Care report—a survey-based assessment of the pressures facing community-based retina practices and of how affiliated physicians view the effect of the RCA partnership on patient access, practice operations, and clinical research.¹

The report is built around an anonymous, 19-question email survey of more than 115 retina specialists at RCA-affiliated practices—approximately one-third of the network—and collected responses between May 4-18, 2026, and supplemented with published literature on the retina care landscape.¹ RCA, a network of retina practices, is part of Cencora. Its findings are organized around 3 themes: patient access, practice sustainability and physician experience, and clinical innovation.

Practice operations and physician experience

Nearly 80% of surveyed specialists said RCA's administrative, operational, and research support had positively affected their practice, their work as a physician, and their ability to care for patients.¹ Respondents identified research infrastructure, data analytics, purchasing and supply chain support, and revenue cycle and billing support as the areas where that support was felt most strongly—functions the report frames as reducing operational complexity so physicians can spend more time on patient care.¹

"As demand for highly specialized retinal care continues to grow, community-based practices are essential to preserving access and advancing next-generation therapies," said Joel A. Pearlman, MD, PhD, of Retinal Consultants Medical Group and co-chair of RCA's Medical Leadership Board.¹ "The findings underscore the value of physician-led models that help practices manage complexity and expand patient access to high-quality care and innovative treatments closer to home." RCA notes that under its practice-management model, clinical and practice-specific decisions remain with individual physicians.¹

The respondent pool skewed toward established clinicians: 70% had practiced as retina specialists for more than 10 years, and 61% had been affiliated with RCA for at least 4 years, while 15% had been affiliated for less than a year.¹

Clinical research and trial access

More than 80% of respondents reported an improved ability to participate in clinical research or offer innovative therapies since affiliating with RCA, and 53% said patient access to clinical trials had improved significantly.¹ The report positions those results against a body of research showing that trial participation is shaped in part by geography. Earlier analyses found that residents of rural and lower-income communities face a substantially greater travel burden to reach diabetic eye disease trial sites, a barrier to enrollment and to access to next-generation therapies.³ Building and sustaining site-level research capacity, the report notes, requires infrastructure that can be difficult for independent community practices to maintain on their own.¹

Patient access to care

Nearly half of surveyed specialists said patient access to care had improved since their practice affiliated with RCA, including 15% who described the improvement as significant.¹ Physicians most often attributed those gains to increased access to clinical trials, the opening of new facilities or satellite clinics, the ability to offer novel therapies, and expanded appointment capacity.¹ Since January 2025, when RCA joined Cencora, the company has committed nearly $40 million toward a planned 18 de novo clinics across 13 states; three are already open, and affiliated practices reported monthly patient-capacity increases ranging from 7% to 16%, according to the report.¹

Those figures land against a documented access gap. A 2026 population-based analysis in Retina found that about 5% of U.S. residents — roughly 1 in 20 — live more than 60 minutes from the nearest retina specialist, with inadequate access concentrated in rural, older, and more racially homogeneous communities.² Disease burden is rising in parallel: an estimated 9.6 million people in the United States were living with diabetic retinopathy in 2021, more than double the 2004 estimate, including 1.84 million with vision-threatening disease.⁴

A pressured operating environment

The report frames its findings within a broader strain on retina care. Federal projections from the Health Resources and Services Administration estimate a 28% shortfall of ophthalmologists by 2038, among the largest projected deficits of any physician specialty.⁵ Reimbursement has not kept pace with costs: adjusted for practice-cost inflation, Medicare physician payment declined an estimated 33% between 2001 and 2025, according to the American Medical Association.⁶ RCA presents its model as one way for practices to absorb those administrative and financial demands while preserving clinical autonomy.¹

The report's scope has limits worth noting. It reflects the perceptions of a self-selected subset of RCA-affiliated physicians surveyed by RCA, without a comparison group or objective measures such as patient volumes, wait times, trial enrollment, or visual outcomes. RCA describes the survey as independent and anonymous.¹

References

1. Retina Consultants of America. Retina Consultants of America releases State of Retina Care report [press release and report]. September 16, 2026. https://www.retinaconsultantsofamerica.com

2. Franco JJ, Fazal O, Pan WW, Wubben TJ, Johnson MW. Geographic access to retinal care in the United States. Retina. Published online July 28, 2026. doi:10.1097/IAE.0000000000004929. https://doi.org/10.1097/IAE.0000000000004929

3. Soares RR, Parikh D, Shields CN, et al. Geographic access disparities to clinical trials in diabetic eye disease in the United States. Ophthalmol Retina. 2021;5(9):879-887. doi:10.1016/j.oret.2020.12.006. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oret.2020.12.006

4. Lundeen EA, Burke-Conte Z, Rein DB, et al. Prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in the US in 2021. JAMA Ophthalmol. Published online June 15, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2023.2289. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2023.2289

5. Health Resources and Services Administration, National Center for Health Workforce Analysis. Physician workforce projections, 2023-2038. https://bhw.hrsa.gov/data-research/projecting-health-workforce-supply-demand

6. American Medical Association. Medicare physician pay has plummeted since 2001. Find out why. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/medicare-medicaid/medicare-physician-pay-has-plummeted-2001-find-out-why