Consider using key performance indicators to maximize medical eye care

Earlier this year, I wrote about the importance of business owners using key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the growth of specific areas of their business (see bit.ly/OM2207ibusiness ). For example, using KPIs to track spectacle lens and frame sales, eyewear capture rate, and annual supplies of contact lenses sold allowed our practice to grow after some difficult times.

Additionally, careful monitoring of KPIs allowed us to see whether the strategies we were employing were working. We were able to pivot when our systems failed, and double down on those that were successful. This same strategy can be used to grow the medical revenue side of a modern optometric practice. We learned that it doesn’t hurt to create areas that make us “special.”

A LAG IN MEDICAL BILLING

After several months of tracking, it became evident that the medical billing areas of our practice were lagging. This medical bucket included medical office visits, medical testing, procedures, and treatments. Our medical billing was growing in the low single digits, while the other areas of our practice were experiencing double-digit growth.

In reviewing the KPIs, my partner and I concluded that to increase medical billing, we needed to invest in new technology. At the time, optometry was embracing innovative thinking in the treatment and management of dry eye disease (DED) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Therefore, to grow our medical revenue and better serve our patients, we took a team-focused approach and enlisted some outstanding technicians to lead the charge in managing both DED and AMD.

CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE

First, we opened our Dry Eye Center of Excellence. Led by our doctors and technicians, we chose a dedicated exam lane, hung a “Dry Eye Center” sign on the exam room door, and invested in technologies that would allow us to diagnose, discuss, and manage DED more efficiently. The exam room included educational tools that allowed us to more easily present the various types and causes of DED; we built treatment kits; and we established a separate DED schedule: one day a week on which we saw patients for follow-up and performed treatments. We saw the medical revenue needle start to move!

I have always had a passion for AMD, so we followed our Dry Eye Center with an AMD Center of Excellence. We equipped the center with all the technology necessary for early diagnosis, careful monitoring, and preventive treatment of this potentially blinding disease. Utilizing ultra widefield photography, OCT, dark adaptometry, and remote patient monitoring with at-home testing, we saw the medical revenue needle move even more!

BENEFITS FOR ALL

It became clear that, once again, the areas of our practice that we decided to change and monitor with KPIs became practice-revenue generators.

Having centers of excellence also established a sense of pride among our team. Our technicians became knowledgeable and were eventually tasked with overseeing the centers. We even ended up promoting one of our technicians to run a Vision Therapy Center at our practice as well!

Monitoring the KPIs of these new endeavors was exciting. If there is an area of optometry that you’d like to grow, I believe it behooves you to make that area a more prominent part of your practice, using the tactics above as examples. Those areas can become revenue generators. OM

DR. EARLEY serves as a therapeutic optometrist at Northeast Ohio Eye Surgeons in Medina, Ohio, where he spent 23 years as vice president/secretary, and was the director of human resources. He is the clinic director of Bright EyeDeas Vision Clinic, a free clinic serving the uninsured, and a member of the AOA and the Ohio Optometric Association. Dr. Earley speaks nationally on specialty contact lenses, macular degeneration, dry eye disease, and practice management. He is a consultant for Alcon, and serves as a KOL for Notal Vision, and MacuHealth. Email him at tearley@neohioeye.com.