EYE OWN A BUSINESS

From Insurance to Independence: Creating a Premium Practice and Work-Life Harmony

Dr. Susan Elizondo shares her journey of transforming her practice into a private pay model and focusing on high-end optical services. By dropping insurance plans and offering a premium experience, she has increased her revenue per patient and created a practice that aligns with her values and goals. 

Learn more about IDOC: Optometry Practice Management & Alliance | IDOC

ChatGPT is a Free Employee

Artificial intelligence can’t replace eyecare providers (not yet anyway), but it can certainly make our work lives easier. In this episode, we shine a spotlight on ChatGPT – a remarkable tool that harnesses AI to generate human-like text, images, and conversational dialogue. We'll share specific examples of how ChatGPT can simplify tasks and workflows in an eyecare practice, potentially saving you countless hours of work each week.  

The future is here! With the help of AI technology, you can take working smarter, not harder, to a new level. 

Behind the Benchmarks: Insights for Managing Overhead and Profitability

Nathan Hayes, the director of financial services at IDOC, discusses the importance of comparing practice financials to other practices. He explains how the Books and Benchmarks service can provide accurate and reliable data to help practice owners make informed decisions about their business. 

Download the report here: https://bit.ly/44HRX0V

Disruption: Technology and The Future of Eye Care

Technology will continue to disrupt the eye care profession. This poses both opportunities and threats for ECPs. In this episode with Travis Beaven, Alcon’s Global Vice President of Vision Care Digital Health, we discuss the role technology will play in the future of eye care. 

A few things we discuss are which technologies will have the greatest impact on the eye care profession, artificial intelligence, adapting to change, privacy issues, and much more!   

While change and disruption can be unsettling, it also opens the door for innovation and new opportunities that improve the experience for both provider and patient.  

Learn more about MARLO: https://home.meetmarlo.com/

Reimagining Your Insurance Billing Operations

Managing billing operations has historically been one of the most challenging tasks of practice ownership. In this episode we explore the reasons for this, how practices are handling (or not handling) these challenges, and the evolving role of technology in billing. One of the more exciting platforms to hit the market is OneSpot, a centralized digital hub to streamline billing processes. OneSpot is productivity software for your insurance biller. The tool helps billers organize, manage, track, and resolve outstanding insurance claims. OneSpot also gives eyecare practice owners and managers visibility into their insurance billing operations, something that the PMS/EHR has not been able to do. Tune in to gain insights into the future of billing and the role OneSpot plays in shaping it. 

3 Surprising Reasons Patients Don’t Buy from You

Resistance to a sale is often countered with additional patient education, assuming that more information will lower the barrier to a sale. In reality, many of our purchase decisions are not driven by what we KNOW about something, they’re driven by what we FEEL about something.  

Fear, excitement, anticipation, trust, safety, confusion, curiosity, and certainty are some examples of emotions that influence our purchase decisions. Research shows the overwhelming majority of our decisions are primarily driven by emotions, not logic. 

In this episode we explore some of the not so obvious reasons people resist making a purchase, along with strategies to counter these situations. 

Current Trends in Eyewear Fashion and Design

In this episode, Selin Olmsted (founder of Selin Olmsted Studio) shares her expertise on a topic many ODs marginalize. Eyewear fashion and design! 

A few things we discuss are insights on the latest eyewear trends, factors to consider when selecting frames, options for implementing private label, and adapting to future trends. 

Doctors know a lot about the clinical side of eye care. Patients want great vision and healthy eyes, but don’t neglect something that is also very important to your patients… Looking good! 

More about Selin and her company https://www.selinolmsted.com/ 

Take Your Practice to the Next Level

In this episode, Sharon Carter shares her strategies for getting “unstuck” and taking your practice to the next level.  

We cover a lot of reasons practices fail to reach their full potential and how to put strategies in place to maintain growth. Spoiler alert! You can’t do this alone. After a certain point, designating a leadership team is necessary. However, those efforts can be sabotaged by putting the wrong people in these roles. It’s also possible that you have the right people with the right attributes, but your approach to promotion and development sets them up for failure. 

What’s the best way to track success? Numbers! In Sharon’s words, “The numbers don’t lie.” In this interview we cover the importance of KPI’s (key performance indicators), which KPI’s to track, and how to hold employees accountable for outcomes. 

Sharon is the owner of ECOC Optometric Consulting. Learn more about her company here: https://ecoc.biz/