8/29/2019 1 Comment Attracting More Millennial PatientsIn order to achieve a healthy number of new patients each year, an optometry practice has to be able to attract new, younger patients. This means tapping into the millennial population and luring them in.
During a recent conversation with one of our referring doctors, the email we sent out on March 18, 2019, titled "Practice Benchmarks - Part 1," was brought up. The metric being discussed was that of new patient growth per year and this doctor noted that achieving the 8-10% benchmark can be challenging due to a percentage of a practice's older patient base passing away.
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What do you do when your eyesight can no longer support the lifestyle you love? This was the question facing Shelby County resident Melody Ouellette last year. A successful real estate agent with Keller Williams Metro South, Ouellette enjoys spending time with her family, sewing, quilting and reading, but began to notice a significant deterioration in her eyesight as she approached her late 40's. Everyone's battle with glaucoma and cataracts is unique, but Ouellette's wasn't necessarily a surprise. "My optometrist is Dr. Heather Webb at the Walmart vision center in Alabaster and she was also my father's optometrist," said Ouellette. "My daddy had glaucoma and had to do the drops and both of my parents had cataracts in their 70's. I began wearing corrective lenses at age 21. At that time, Dr. Webb noticed an enlarged optic nerve and told me it may be indicative of a glaucoma trait. "Dr. Webb closely monitored it eventually referred me to VisionAmerica and Dr. Paul Batson for visual field testing." On Friday and Saturday, July 26-27, optometrists and members of their staff from across the state of Alabama joined us in Prattville, AL, for the 2019 VisionAmerica Summer Conference.
This is a special time for us each year as we get the opportunity to facilitate the gathering of so many of our referring doctors in one location for a time of celebration, networking, and education. You are currently reading part two of our two-part series titled, "30 Years and Counting - A Conversation with Dr. Jim Marbourg." If you missed part one and would like to read it now, please click here.
After a nationwide search, Dr. Deborah Alexander was hired out of Texas and became the first surgeon at OECC. "Most of the surgeons we approached didn't think we would be successful," noted Marbourg. "We hired Dr. Alexander as the first surgeon for our center due to her exemplary bedside manner and focus on positive outcomes for the patients. She was the right choice for the job." After hiring Dr. Jeff Kegarise as the first Center Director, the stage was set for what would be OECC's first full year in operation and, statistically speaking, many believed the odds for success were slim. In 2019, you are one call to Legal Zoom away from having your business up and running in weeks, but the story of VisionAmerica is a bit more complicated than that.
In March of 1984, a group of Alabama optometrists gathered together and began casting a vision for what their profession could be in this state. Almost 35 years later, it's easy to wonder if that group of optometrists could have possibly imagined that they were laying the foundations for an organization that would forever change optometry in the state. It wasn't necessarily a quick process. From their initial meeting in March of 1984, it would take five years for this group to see their plan come to fruition. 6/26/2019 1 Comment Once in a Career CasesDr. Theodore Woodward is famous for the aphorism he coined in the late 1940s at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
He told his medical interns, "When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras." When asked to describe his upcoming lecture at the 2019 VisionAmerica Summer Conference titled, "Once in a Career Cases," Dr. Matthew Katz took the old adage one step further and said, "These cases aren't zebras, they are my unicorns." 6/24/2019 0 Comments "It is one of those areas where you are never finished learning because the rules are always changing."Few things in the world of medicine make doctors cringe (or yawn) like the topic of coding and billing.
At this point, changes to this particular aspect of medicine have become like a bad game of hide and seek. Each and every year, we submit items for reimbursement and pray we find payment for our services in the bank account. These changes place an additional burden on both staff members and doctors as the same procedures are assigned new codes which must be researched, learned, and implemented in our practices. What really happens when you refer your patient over to a retina consultant?
Sure, you know the process itself works, but what is the science behind what they do and what does the future of individualized therapy look like? These are the questions Dr. Matthew Katz has asked since entering the field of eyecare and he aims to shed some light on the answer in his upcoming lecture on proteomics at the 2019 VisionAmerica Summer Conference. 6/12/2019 1 Comment June Photo of the MonthThe photo above is an OCT image of a patient one-month after DSAEK (Descemet Stripping Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty) with Dr. Matthew Albright.
You can see great apposition of the endothelial graft and no stromal edema. It is no secret that hiring has never been more challenging.
In our recent piece on finding new talent, we noted that the current unemployment rate is 3.8%, which makes the odds of you finding unemployed individuals with experience in optometry slim to none. But the challenges don't stop there. Gallup's 2017 State of the Workplace notes that a "record 47% of the workforce says now is a good time to find a quality job, and more than half of employees (51%) are searching for new jobs or watching for openings." |
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