viewpoint

It’s About the Details

For all the unanswered questions, your practice depends on business leadership

FROM THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Jim Thomas

You decide to undertake an initiative to improve your practice. It could be anything from billing more efficiently to creating scripts for staff to use in pre-exam.

For the purposes of a specific example, let’s say you decide to increase your practice’s engagement with patients through social media. As the project progresses from planning to execution, you need questions answered:

▶ Is this the best utilization of your staff’s time? Assuming it is, continue questioning.

▶ Which social media platforms are the best fit for your message and your audience?

▶ Who should post? And who takes over when your “poster” is not on the clock?

▶ Who should edit and approve the posts?

▶ What should you post? Social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk wrote an entire book on this topic — Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (2013, HarperBusiness).

▶ Should you coordinate the content between the sites you utilize? Do you link a post on a social media site to a video on your website? Do you link the post to another social media site or embed the video on the posting site?

▶ To maximize the efficiency, when and how often do you post?

▶ What measures do you need to put in place to remain HIPAA and regulation compliant?

▶ How do you ensure security?

▶ What action do you take when someone replies to one of your posts with a negative post?

Excitement and reward

Do your research, and you can find the answers to these and many other questions that arise. But others, some of which involve details critical to your practice’s success, rely solely on your expertise, experience and intuition. If the devil is in the details, then you must visit the devil. Your answers to these questions are what makes your practice one of a kind. It is also what makes the business of optometry (the theme of this issue of OM) so exciting, motivating and rewarding. OM

I am deeply saddened to report that the art director of OM, Kimberly Macheski, passed away earlier this month. Kim’s talents graced the pages of OM and our sister publications at PentaVision for more than 25 years. Our prayers and sincerest condolences go out to her family. We were blessed by her presence, and she will be sorely missed.