So many lenses, so many practitioners;
How to make your practice stand out from the pack - Part 3

Dr. Gary Gerber

This article is the third in a series of practice management articles from one of the foremost practice management experts in the US and founder of “The Power Practice”, a leading practice management consultancy . Dr Gerber has presented in the UK several times now and has seen many similarities between US and UK practice.

We are all creatures of habit.  We wake up in the morning, shower, brush our teeth, maybe put contact lenses on, eat breakfast and head off to our practices.  Five days a week, exact same routine.  In fact, most of us have the same breakfast every day!

It’s natural then to expect that our instinct and comfort of doing things by habit would follow us into how we manage our practices and patients.  However, not realising so has a profound effect on our profitability.

Consider the following patient.  He’s a 22 year old male, -2.00 OU spherical Rx, healthy body and eyed young man.  He’s a first time contact lens wearer.  What is your “lens of choice” for this patient?  Is that choice based on clinical judgment or habit?  After all, you already have it chosen, don’t you? 

Now, close your eyes and imagine this patient is sitting in front of you.  Start talking to him about his contact lenses.  Do you notice that the script and words are already pre-formed?  That’s because, just like your coffee being prepared the same way every morning, you’ve fit so many patients like this before that your presentation to them is Pavlovian.

It’s time to acknowledge and break these bad practice habits and increase the profits in your practice!  Here’s how to do it in four steps:

Step one:  How to break a bad habit

Psychologists tell us that the best way to break a habit is to substitute it with another one.  For example, stop smoking by starting to chew gum.  We’ll use this premise in our following three steps.

Step two:  Realise that NOT fitting contact lenses is a habit.

Just as our example above has you immediately reaching for a particular lens, there are many other examples that might have you reaching for no lens at all!  In fact, you may habitually postulate simply based on the neutralisation of a patients eyeglasses, that they have no interest in even hearing about, let alone wearing, contact lenses.  Take the case of the astigmatic presbyope.  Will you discuss contact lenses with them?  If you’re like most practitioners, if the patient doesn’t initiate the discussion, probably not.  And why not?  Because you have habitually not had these discussions with these types of patients.  Break this habit by substituting it with this one.  Ask every patient, regardless of your preconceived notions about their desire to wear lenses, “Have you ever considered how wearing contact lenses would benefit you?”

Step three: Stop calling them “contact lens patients”

We have a habit of defining our patients by their vision corrections.  “You have an eyeglass patient waiting for you in room two.”  What’s an “eyeglass patient?”  In my world, it’s a patient who has yet to be told about contact lenses.  Break this habit by referring to patients as, well, as patients!  Nothing else – just patients!

Step four:  Take out your calculator

The long term profitability of a “contact lens patient” (I just took the liberty of breaking step three above) is typically more than THREE TIMES that of an “eyeglass patient.”  That happens for a few reasons.  First, while the product sale might be less, there is a higher professional fee charged, or at least a higher fee SHOULD be charged.  Additionally, contact lens wearers tend to be more loyal than eyeglass wearers and will be associated with the practice for longer periods of time.  Relative to this, there will be more opportunities for billable visits during this longer association.  Finally, virtually every contact lens wearer buys glasses as well, and actually spends as much on their glasses as non contact lens wearers. The converse is never true.

It’s a simple formula.  Substitute your current non-profit generating habits for ones that make you more money.  It’s easy to do and the dividends are enormous.

Copyright Dr Gary Gerber, 2008

This article was written by Dr Gary Gerber and is reproduced with his permission. Views expressed in this advice may not be those of CIBA VISION (UK) Limited