ODs may have an opportunity to improve their contact lens patients’ eye comfort, findings from Jobson Optical Research’s 2013 Contact Lens Insight Survey suggest. Some 53.6 percent of respondents wear their contact lenses all day, but always remove them before going to sleep. Just about one-quarter (24.9 percent) of respondents wear their contact lenses at least occasionally while sleeping.
Click HERE to purchase Jobson Optical Research’s 2013 Contact Lens Insight Survey.
What do you see when you walk into your exam room? Is it a clinical looking, high tech appearing, amazing room or does it look the same as it did 10 years ago? Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, flat-screen televisions, electric cars, smartphones… technology changes over the last decade are impressive. Our patients experience these changes, then come into our offices where we use a phoroptor that is the same one used when they were a child, and measure their new glasses with a ruler and a felt tip marker. Is it time to upgrade?
One of the things that commonly shows up in patient surveys is that they want a high-tech exam. An easy change is adding video to your slit lamp. Incorporating video into the exam room gives you a higher-tech exam. That eye on the screen is the patient’s eye. There is nothing more powerful to the patient than seeing their own eye. There is no better case presentation to make to a patient than to show them a problem on their own eye on the screen and explain how you are going to address it with the treatment plan.
With today’s technology it is not difficult to add video to your slit lamp. Memory storage for the images is relatively inexpensive. You can pick up a terabyte of memory for around one hundred dollars. High-definition screens have come down in price. To make the case even better, anterior segment photography documenting a problem is a billable procedure. All of this makes slit lamp video accessible to every practice today.
Your action plan for this week is to upgrade your exam room. Identify the changes that would improve your clinical documentation and make your case presentation more effective. Prioritize the changes. Create a plan to implement those changes. In your plan, be sure to include how the changes will affect your workflow. Also be sure to use a spreadsheet to evaluate your return on investment before making the purchase.
It’s too easy to put this off. Don’t. Take today to make that first step toward updating your exam room so that you can provide 21st century care for your patients.
