Boosting eyewear capture rate
Dr. Whipple is using the Smart Mirror device to take custom measurements on his staff member, Julia. Dr. Whipple says small improvements to how patients are interacted with make a big, positive difference to eyewear capture rate.
By Ian G. Whipple, OD
Oct. 23, 2024
Boosting eyewear capture rate is a steep, ongoing challenge in my practice. Here are a few impactful improvements we made this year.
As a result of making these changes, our capture rate increased in September 2024 to 52.4 percent compared to 44 percent the month prior.
Providing Custom Quote for Glasses with New Technology
The new FTC rule that we need to obtain and store signature confirmations that all patients receive a copy of their glasses Rx became an opportunity to engage with patients for a few minutes longer at the end of every exam.
Recently, we decided that along with a copy of the patient’s glasses Rx, we would require our opticians to also include a copy of a custom quote for glasses. This way every patient has transparent pricing of their glasses so that, even if they shop around, they’ll know what the price would be if they purchase from us.
We used a custom glasses quote software for many years in our office to quickly and accurately price out glasses options with insurance.
Over the past two years we developed a new version of this custom software which will launch soon as a commercially available product, Eyewear Stream. Full disclosure, I am a co-founder of the product.
Editor’s note: There are other software solutions that make it easier to provide custom eyewear quotes to patients. One such technology is Paradeyem. Some EHRs also can create eyewear quotes.
This new and improved version of our original calculator allows opticians to price out glasses in just seconds. The invoice that is generated can be printed and physically handed to the patient (which is what we do in our office), or it can be sent via e-mail to the patient with the option of having them check out and purchase their glasses from their computer (which is what we hope to implement in the coming weeks in our office).
Our staff had to change a couple of check-out procedures to provide patients with a custom eyewear quote. They need to obtain a signature confirmation AND generate a glasses quote. This takes a few minutes at checkout. Patients seem to be engaged and appreciate the detailed pricing they receive.
Results: Capture rate definitely is improved. We have at least one patient per week who returns to our office, after having shopped around, to complete their purchase with us. I expect an easy 4x ROI on investment in time and cost of Eyewear Stream with these returning patients.
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Anecdotally, last week in our satellite office, we had two patients return after pricing their glasses elsewhere. This generated an additional $864 just last week alone.
Consistency is key. We only really implemented this new system in the past month. We’re still working on getting to 100 percent invoice generation. On a recent Friday, for example we generated quotes for 21-28 patients, or, in other words, for 75 percent of patients. I expect a significant boost in sales as we continue to improve our consistency.
I agree with the recent ROB article, “Authenticity in Sales: 3 Changes.” Prescribing needs to start with the conversation between the doctor and the patient.
This is a tool/approach that builds on the doctor-patient relationship, where the optician is essentially an extension of the doctor.
Revisiting Pricing
We found that some of our frame and lenses prices hadn’t been updated in a while. We do a great job keeping our core products affordable and accurately priced for today’s market, but we found there were some frame lines that weren’t appropriately priced.
I tasked my optical manager with revisiting frame pricing. She found that all but two lines had prices that were updated recently. The remaining two lines, however, hadn’t been adjusted in several years.
Specifically, our entry-level frames were inconsistently priced. By uniformly pricing all lines from this vendor, we expect to see easier and more confident pricing discussions with opticians.
Additionally, for patients who indicate they really need to stick to a certain budget (usually at their insurance’s frame allowance) our team always knows which lines can be used.
The training on our new pricing was simple; just a reminder to opticians that this manufacturer’s frames are all the same price now.
Results: In a perfect world we would provide the best lens technology and put it in a killer frame. For some patients this may not be possible due to budget and expectation restraints. In those cases, I’d still rather make the sale than have the patient go elsewhere and possibly be sold inferior quality products.
Doctor Sees What It’s Like to Be an Optician
I spent a few days as the optician, in addition to the doctor.
There were several days when we were short staffed. Three of those days were in my small satellite clinic and one was only for an afternoon in our primary location where we didn’t have enough opticians to cover the patient load. I was available on those days. I regularly schedule practice management time into my work week.
Rather than burden the available opticians or cancel patients’ scheduled appointments, I decided to be the optician. I literally walked miles in my optician’s boots and saw, first-hand, how our office procedures work well and where they could be improved upon.
I felt I needed additional training on routine tasks such as taking payments and posting fee slips.
In my smaller office, I saw the patient as their doctor then brought them out front and completed their exam as the optician. I joked with patients that “they were stuck with me for a bit longer” as they selected glasses.
This approach of having the doctor see what it was like to be an optician led to higher sales volume and capture rate. We actually had some of our highest production days in the satellite clinic.
The more valuable lesson, though, was that I was able to feel more compassion and gratitude for my current team. Their job is hard, and though we take steps to make it easier, I still found some interesting tasks that I would like to continue to work as an office toward simplifying, such as how we post insurance discounts in our practice management software.
Currently, my team posts each line of charges for glasses frames and lenses, then applies each insurance discount and co-pay to each line individually. This is a tedious and repetitive task. Just because we’ve been doing it this way doesn’t necessarily mean we need to continue it in the same manner.
I’d like to explore with our EHR team to see if there are more efficient ways of applying these discounts without so many repetitive keystrokes. Hopefully we’ll find a great solution to a problem that I, frankly, wouldn’t have even known existed in our office.
Results: Day one as optician in our satellite clinic, we sold seven pairs of glasses on six patient exams and on day three as optician in our satellite office, we sold six pairs and an annual supply of contacts on eight patient exams.
I can’t be the optician forever, but I really want to continue to explore the ways I spoke with patients as their optician to see if there are best practices I might be able to share with my team.
Ian G. Whipple, OD, is the owner of Vision Source of Farr West and Vision Source of South Ogden, both in Utah. To contact him: iwhipple@gmail.com
