May 10, 2023
Wow! What a beginning to our Generation 45+ journal, Review of Presbyopia and the Aging Eye, and The EYE TEAM’s cutting-edge articles and topics. Now, we add more, as The EYE TEAM continues to excel at delivering on the promise of relevant, current, and useful knowledge that can change the practice pattern for Generation 45+.
I hope you are enjoying the caliber of our articles and dedication of our editors. Remember, this is an archived journal, so please read and reread to enhance your clinical skills.
In my last column, I discussed the importance of developing a fee-for-service practice. I recently visited my son’s practice and was once again reminded of the reasons for a fee-for-service model when I witnessed how he has created excellent clinical skills for multifocal contact lenses.
I wear multifocal contact lenses with great success, and I think it is important to reevaluate the prescription every six months. Small changes can make a major difference. Personally, I usually just over-refract with a 0.25 diopter change and observe any improvement. This visit, however, I decided to be a real patient and let David try to evaluate multiple brands so I could observe and learn all about our great new products. To my surprise, my personal contact lens evaluation process for multifocal contact lenses is so different from David’s evaluation approach, yet both are successful. Results demonstrate that different evaluation processes can be customized based on the doctor’s experience, but they all can be successful. The end result was that I could wear all three brands, and they were each slightly different prescriptions.
His evaluation process was the perfect example of why we should follow a fee-for-service model that can be applied not just to multifocal contact lenses but to pharmaceuticals and other products and services for our presbyopic patients. When the practitioner makes the effort to put in the time needed for a complete evaluation, have the necessary products in stock and available in the practice, all along with professional expertise, then a fee-for-service model is warranted. When you combine the right products with your time and expertise, you deserve to charge the appropriate fees.
One of the best fee-for service opportunities that correlates closely with fees for multifocal contact lenses is the pharmacological treatment of presbyopia. Today, it is Vuity, next is Orasis CSF-1, and then we have at least three more to follow. With these new advances in eye care treatment modalities, we as doctors should develop a practice and business philosophy to create successful patient outcomes while building new profit centers. So, helping you develop a fee-for-service practice is one of our goals at Review of Presbyopia and the Aging Eye.
