How to meet patient expectations in an age of warp-speed change

No one needs to convince you that things are changing rapidly in the world around us. While you might not have yet become a shut in due to the convenience of Amazon Prime and you may still drive yourself to your practice, not all your patients do. They expect to buy their contact lenses on-line, and they routinely take Uber to appointments.

It’s not exactly clear whether Charles Darwin or someone else said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change,” but it might as well have been an optometrist.

WHY THE SLOW PACE?

Yet, relative to other industries around us that are changing at warp speed, optometry is moving at its usual historic glacial pace. Why is that?

1. We don’t see other O.D.s making sweeping changes, so we don’t think it’s necessary.

For example, we see eyeglasses and contact lenses for sale more and more online, but we view those sources as “different,” as they’re not a colleague we know. We then go on to incorrectly conclude, “I can wait and see where this all goes before I commit.”

2. Things are pretty good as they are now.

Most of us do well in our practices. I’m not saying that success, regardless of how you define it, didn’t come at the expense of a lot of hard work, but usually it pays off, and most docs do just fine. With that in mind, and seeing that most other docs in our community rarely shutter their doors, why would we make any changes? As in point number one, it’s probably OK to keep doing the same thing, as no one else is making changes either.

The problem with the above two premises is that they are focused on you, your practice and our industry instead of our patients and how they live their lives. You are your patient’s eye doctor. They are not comparing their experience in your office their experience at other eye doctors — they don’t have one. Instead, they are comparing what happens in your office to everything else they’re constantly exposed to outside of your practice.

Use the example of the Amazon Go Grocery Store. A customer walks in, picks what they want and walks out. That’s it. Compare that to what happens in your practice. If you’re thinking that’s not a fair comparison, you’re missing the point. Fair or not, experiences like that are fast becoming the norm for your patients. You’re mistaken if you think patients don’t realize they can track their pizza delivery on an app but still have to call your office and ask, “When will my glasses be ready?”

YOUR FUTURE-PROOF PLAN

The way to future-proof your practice is to first recognize that patients do have this disconnect with your practice. If you don’t have an app that allows patients to track their glasses orders, then do the next best thing, and put steps in place to manually text or email patients status updates. If managed vision care plans necessitate that checking out and paying a bill is an 81-step process compared to Amazon Go, do absolutely everything you can to reduce 81 steps to 67. Use whatever technology or make whatever system changes you must to make that happen, and make it a priority.

While you may be your patient’s eye doctor, the experience they receive in your practice is compared to everything else in their world. If you’re concerned and aware that your next patient just returned from a vacation at The Ritz Carlton and ordered an HDMI cable in your parking lot before walking into your office, then you’re off to a good start. OM

DR. GERBER is the president of the Power Practice, a company specializing in making optometrists more profitable. Learn more at www.powerpractice.com , or call Dr. Gerber at (888) 356-4447.