Dr. Cazares with his practice associate, Geesala Garvin, OD. Dr. Cazares said the right investments and the right practice team have enabled him to provide patients with a true 21st century experience.
A few key ways to bring your practice into the 21st century.
By Ryan Cazares, OD
Dec. 20, 2023
I opened my cold-start practice in June 2013. As one of the younger optometrists in the area, I knew I had an opportunity to separate myself from the competition by designing my clinic for modern times.
Here are the most important things we did to grow to a practice with two doctors, eight support staff and 26,000 patient records in just 10 years.
Made Everything for Patients Accessible Online or Through Text Message
Scheduling, practice-patient communication, ordering (and order status updates), recall and appointment reminders are all done electronically in our office.
Millennials and Generation Z patients prefer to make transactions online and immediately. To older generations, it may seem as though these patients are lazy and anti-social, but the reality is that it is so much more convenient to have the ability to schedule an appointment online or to be able to reorder contact lenses through a text message or e-mail reminder.
The goal was to make scheduling and ordering accessible 24/7. Many patients lead extremely busy lives and may not remember to schedule their appointments until after the work day is over and my clinic is closed. What better way to separate myself from local competition than to make some of our services available through our website, e-mail or text message, especially when no one else around me was offering that?
Along with pleasing patients, making everything available online and via text freed up staff time! My front office deals with fewer distracting phone calls for scheduling appointments, checking order status of glasses, or placing a contact lens order.
I use EyeAppoint for scheduling, which integrates with our electronic health record, RevolutionEHR. Eye Appoint provides a link for your webmaster to add to your website, and the patient clicks it to schedule. This service costs around $80 per month if you pay for the year in advance. I use Weave for patient communication, and Dr. Contact Lens to facilitate easy contact-lens ordering for patients, whenever they choose to place their order.
Editor’s note: Other online and text communication service options include Solutionreach, Demandforce and Simplifeye, among many other options. And there are other contact lens ordering technologies available, including Abby from ABB OPTICAL GROUP, MARLO from Alcon and CLX, among other options.
Purchased Slit Lamp Imaging System
I noticed patients left a common note in their reviews of the clinic: that our doctors do a great job of explaining their diagnoses. I pride myself on my ability to articulate complicated eye diseases in a way which all of our patients can comprehend. My associate, Geesala Garvin, OD, is also good at this. So, how could we further capitalize on this strength? Well, what if we could show the patient our exam findings?
Other Articles to Explore
So, we purchased a Firefly slit lamp.
Editor’s Note: Other slit lamp imaging system options include Topcon Digital Slit Lamp Series, MX2 external ocular camera, Visionix EyePix3 and ZEISS SL Imaging Solution, among many other options.
There were a few goals in mind behind this purchase:
1.) To help patients better understand their signs and symptoms. It it much easier to explain meibomian gland dysfunction when I can show the patient their capped glands and also their meibomography results. Dr. Garvin has used it to show her patients their abrasions and punctate keratitis.
2.) To help me with my scleral lens fits. Sometimes the best way to troubleshoot specialty lens fits is to send a picture or a video to my lab. The Firefly slit lamp offers clear, high-quality pictures and videos that help me more easily show my lab consultants precise changes that need to be made to the contacts. The slit lamp has an excellent Wratten filter that helps to show fluorescein. Recently, I wanted to show my lab that a scleral lens was coming into contact with a patient’s cornea in one specific area. I was able to attach the photo to an e-mail, and we were able to fix the fit.
The Firefly slit lamp costs $16,000. It took my rep a half day to install it.
The slit lamp provides a great “wow” factor; patients leave the room with a better understanding of what is impacting their eyes’ ability to see clearly or their eyes’ overall health. I can then more easily explain my plan to fix the problems.
In addition to aiding patient education, and, therefore, patient compliance, having a slit lamp camera helps us be more profitable. It helps me reduce my scleral follow-ups by allowing me to more effectively troubleshoot complex fits with my lab. This allows me to finalize scleral contact lens prescriptions with fewer follow-ups, allowing me to schedule more new fits. At a $3,000 revenue per patient for a scleral fit, this slit lamp quickly paid for itself.
I combined my use of the Firefly slit lamp with my recently purchased Eaglet Scleral Surface Profiler to cut my follow-ups down dramatically. My new scleral lens patients were averaging four follow-ups, but I am now down to two follow-ups on average.
Reimbursement for anterior segment photos averages only about $24 at my clinic, but that can quickly add up. I was able to locate the clinical policy for one of my stricter insurance plans. I have all of the CPT codes covered for 92285 printed and laminated for the exam room where the Firefly slit lamp is located. Surprisingly, many anterior segment diagnoses codes are covered. Just make sure to interpret your photo and document medical necessity and your intent to use the photo to monitor progression or resolution of the condition.
Using ChatGPT to Customize Patient Education Materials & Social Media Marketing
As soon as I heard about ChatGPT, I logged into the app and began playing with it. I wasted a lot of time asking it to tell me dad jokes, help me plan trips, or give me Halloween costume ideas! But I then found out that I can use it to help better run my business–especially if I subscribed to ChatGPT Plus.
Basic ChatGPT is free to use. ChatGPT+, which features more options and the ability to search the web and create images, is $20 per month.
If you know how to use it properly, ChatGPT can help you save a lot of time. I needed to create new patient educational material. We were using the AOA Store’s educational pamphlets to hand out to patients if they had conditions such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, cataracts or simply presbyopia. Of course, the astigmatism pamphlet always flew off the shelf.
Although the AOA’s pamphlets are great, I wanted to be able to customize the material to include my clinic’s logo and contact information. I also wanted to highlight the specific services my clinic and my doctors are able to provide that are not listed in the AOA pamphlets, such as scleral lens profilometry, corneal topography and myopia management.
I can already see the educational pamphlets positively impacting patient care. The material is written in a way which patients can easily understand. It also has links to resources such as support groups like the National Keratoconus Foundation. At the bottom of each education page, I list something that we tend to forget to mention to patients as we diagnose them with what can sometimes be life-altering diseases: that we can refer to mental health providers if they are struggling with coping with their conditions.
I am currently using ChatGPT to create handouts on myopia management. The handout will educate patients and their parents on the high incidence of eye disease in myopes compared to emmetropes. It will also describe the ways in which my clinic can manage myopia, including MiSight 1 day contact lenses, orthokeratology and atropine. I will construct the material to allow myself or my associate to point out the best option for the patient and the cost of the preferred treatment, as parents will need to understand that this is not treatment that is yet covered by vision or medical plans.
Other ways in which I use ChatGPT are to generate ideas for social media posts and blog posts for my website. Although I consider myself a natural at marketing on social media and online, I sometimes get writer’s block. ChatGPT can be used to break through that block to give me ideas. It is not perfect, nor does it keep up with cutting-edge treatment and technology in optometry, so it is imperative to customize the information it gives to you.
Bottom Line
A few relatively small investments can change how patients experience and perceive your practice, helping your office to align with the other modern businesses your patients visit or use as customers.
Ryan Cazares, OD, is the owner of Scott Eye Care in Scott, La. To contact him: dr.cazares@scotteye.com
