Technology is advancing at a rapid pace on both the medical sides and the business sides of our practices. Yet, some of us pay attention to medical innovation and turn a blind eye to the administrative technologies that are becoming critical to not only compete but thrive in practice today.

As the co-founder of an online contact lens ordering system and technology-focused OD alliance, you could say I am a true believer in practice management software. Not only have I seen what implementing “software as a service” add-ons to my electronic health record system (EHR) has done for my practice, but how it has affected hundreds of practices across the nation. Our patients compliment our practice every day, as we have adopted systems that better help us take care of our patients and create an outstanding customer experience.

This article will dive into business/administrative technologies you can add to your practices that can help increase staff engagement and staff productivity, while providing an outstanding patient experience. In going through this article, you should consider putting on your business-owner hats and thinking in terms of providing a truly phenomenal patient or customer experience.

ADMINISTRATIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Here are 10 administrative technologies we have adopted in our practice to better serve our staff, all while improving the patient experience:

1 Contact lens-ordering system: Patients want to order their contacts from us, but if it’s not easy or convenient they often go elsewhere. Did you know it takes 28 steps from start to finish to process a single contact lens order for a patient when it is shipped back to the office? By placing, on average, 1,000 contact lens orders per year, staff is spending over 325 hours¹ of precious time unpacking boxes and calling patients to pick up their lenses. By using an ordering system, our contact lens business has grown year over year by double digits. This platform and marketing system reminds patients whose contact lens prescriptions are expired that they are due to come back for their annual eye exams, and also reminds them when they are due to reorder lenses. It also allows us to be FTC-compliant by sending patients digital copies of their prescriptions, which they can download or order in one easy click from us.

2 Online appointment scheduling: A total of 43% of patients prefer to book appointments online², yet only a handful of us offer direct online booking in our offices. The average appointment-setting call takes 6 to 8 minutes at my practice. Over 50% of patients now book their own appointments online, which saves us close to 15 hours of phone time each month. Yes, you can still control your appointment book by blocking off certain slots throughout the day and book those internally. Most EHR companies have a preferred vendor or offer their own scheduler that syncs directly with one’s EHR.

3 Live chat on your website: Does your office close at 5 p.m. or are you closed daily for lunch? By adding a live chat, which is done off-site by the company from whom the you purchase the service, the office gets to be open 24-7.

Not only does having a live chat on your website help reduce phone calls to answer questions like, “what are your hours,” but it allows optometrists to serve their patients without staff being involved and to be there for patients.

4 Vision plan verification: This is one area that needs a huge overhaul. Before my practice implemented a tool to help verify vision plans, we had one staff member dedicated to pulling vision plan authorizations for the next day’s patients. By implementing a vision plan verification platform, not only are we saving over 25 hours a week looking up benefits, but the included copay calculator is helping us capture mistakes we were overlooking because we were trying to see the next patient.

5 Optical pre-shop/online inventory: In having an optical shop, we have to show our patients what inventory we carry, just like every other online retailer our patients visit. Patients are used to shopping online now, so in order to continue being patient-centric we must meet them where they currently are.

After implementing new online inventory software, we are saving over 10 minutes on most patients, as they pre-shop their optical purchases; when they come in the door, the frames they selected are pulled and ready for them. (Talk about white glove service!)

By having patients pre-shop, we know what type of frames the patient is interested in and can help speed up the time they are spending in the optical, which patients truly appreciate. It also puts them into the buyer mindset before they even enter the door.

6 Online patient forms: A sure way to not impress your patients is to make them arrive 20 minutes early to fill out forms that can be hard to read, due to the number of times they have been photocopied. Not only are we saving trees by utilizing online forms, but we are, again, offering a top-of-the-line customer service experience for patients that is easy to implement and is appreciated by patients.

It is imperative that online forms talk back to one’s EHR to really help eliminate double data entry. This also allows staff to truly listen and be there with patients vs. looking at a computer screen.

7 Patient communication/reminders: Missed appointments cost the U.S. health care system over $150 billion per year.³ As no-shows and missed appointments are on the rise, it is more important than ever to stay in front of patients.

After recently having a baby, the only thing that kept me from missing all these appointments is a text reminder going off an hour before.

We all get busy, after all, so we shouldn’t be afraid to use reminders for ourselves and our patients! In our office, we use patient communication software for both texting patients and appointment reminders.

8 Pay-over-time-financing: As we are all offering higher-paying services, such as dry eye disease management and myopia control, it is important to charge patients what those services are worth. By discounting services, we are actually doing the patient a disservice because now we can’t invest as much back in to the practice to help them.

Providing a buy now, pay-over-time technology improves the optical capture rate and second pair sales, as well as increases annual supply sales of contact lenses. By offering such options, the OD is, once again, able to connect patients with the care they truly need, all while being patient-centric.

9 Bookkeeping services: Finances are the most important part of any business, and you can only grow what you track. By having an up-to-date financial report of your practice, you can make easy decisions and grow your business.

We have implemented a new bookkeeping platform and have taken the mundane tasks of verifying every line item transaction off of our financial team. This enables the billing team to go after accounts receivable and outstanding patient collections, which has been a win-win for our practice.

10 Your practice website: All the above are all great services, but if you haven’t updated your website recently, do so to make sure you put your best face forward to the world.

Remember, the backend SEO is what Google reads, but patients only want to do certain things on your website, and they should be able to find these items without scrolling. These include: ordering contact lenses, booking appointments, seeing office hours, filling out forms, paying their bills, and shopping for glasses.

Pro Tips for Implementation

KEEP THESE TIPS IN MIND WHEN ADDING ADMINISTRATIVE TECHNOLOGY TO YOUR PRACTICE

 

BE THE LEADER OF YOUR PRACTICE

 

Remember, you are the business owner and as much as we want staff to buy in at every turn, you are the one responsible for the success of your practice. We have a business to run and paychecks to write, and while a staff vote is okay, remember, you always have veto power!

 

 

 

GO SLOW

 

Add one new technology at time until you have a well-oiled machine. Then, keep improving and innovating. Some are easily implemented in a few hours, while others do take time. But anything worth doing is going to take effort and time.

 

 

 

EVALUATE ROI FOR MONTHLY SERVICES

 

Don’t just ask what a new technology will cost. Ask, “What will this cost me if I don’t do it?” There are times when an upfront cost can actually yield a much larger long-term savings. Truly evaluate the ROI (return on investment) on these services.

 

 

 

MAKE USE OF STAFF TIME

 

Carefully consider how to prioritize staff time, and how it contributes to profit generation. For instance, instead of having your staff unpack a contact lens box and go through a 28 -step process to dispense contact lenses to patients, have them first do patient recall and get patients on the schedule. Getting in additional patients will generate $350 to $500 on each call, vs. the $50 to $200 on calls to pick up contact lenses.

 

 

 

MAKE A DECISION

 

Remember, not making a decision to move forward or hold off is a decision... a decision to stay the same. Don’t know where to start? Pick something off the list and go from there. An easy place to start is the way you place contact lens orders.

 

STAFF IMPLEMENTATION

Now the fun part… Staff implementation. When bringing a new technology to your practice, it is critical that you start with how it can help the team. By empowering your staff to solve their own pain points and helping them spend their time more wisely, you are already ahead of the curve. We only have so much energy in a day. If all that energy is being spent doing low-level tasks, patient care and your practice will suffer. In the short-term, yes, implementing something new may make their lives harder, but in the long-run, it will benefit not only them, but the patient and the practice.

To get staff more involved in adopting new technology, you can enable them to do product demos and take discovery sales calls, and have them bring you their ideas.

In our practice, we have our staff do demos first and bring to us the potential return on investment, what the product can do, what implementation looks like, and then we evaluate the product together. For example, the live chat feature was recently added to our website due to my staff bringing it to my attention.

How many gatekeepers do you have in your practice? If the answer is “too many,” think about all the opportunities that you have said “no” to, that you didn’t even know about.

AN OUTSTANDING PATIENT EXPERIENCE

Providing an outstanding patient experience is one of the biggest competitive advantages we have, so continue to improve patient and practice flow and forget about the outside noise. By becoming truly patient-centric and adding administrative technologies to the practice, we have an opportunity to improve patient flow, improve patient retention, and eliminate mundane tasks for our staff. Be that office that patients compliment for always having something new.

My response to patients who compliment us is, “You invest in us, so we invest in you.” By allowing myself to work on my practice as much as I work in my practice, we have increased our bottom line substantially, while increasing patient and staff satisfaction. Let’s not only continue to change the lives of our patients through sight but through the vision we have for the practice. OM

REFERENCES

1. Tabiza, J. Creating Patient-centric Care. TechifEYE. June 16, 2022. https://blog.techifeye.com/patientcentric . Accessed June 21, 2022.
2. Eira, A. 74 Basic Appointment Scheduling Statistics: 2021/2022 Data Analysis & Market Share. Finances Online. https://financesonline.com/appointment-scheduling-statistics/ . Accessed June 21, 2022.
3. Gier, J. Missed appointments cost the U.S. healthcare system $150B each year. Healthcare Innovation. April 26, 2017. https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/clinical-it/article/13008175/missed-appointments-cost-the-us-healthcare-system-150b-each-year . Accessed June 21, 2022.

DR. RHUE owns a private practice in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She is also the co-founder of Dr. Contact Lens and Techifeye. She enjoys empowering her colleagues by sharing her passion for business technology, myopia management and scleral lenses. She can be reached at brhue@drcontactlens.com.