Eyeworld

EW FEATURE 44 January 2011 here, I worked with a community optometrist. I didn't have an op- tometrist in my practice until about 6 years ago. Dr. Nichamin: I don't think there's a magic formula in our practice. His- torically, we have had approximately two to three times the number of optometrists in our practice com- pared to the number of surgeons. However, that's more a function of the expansive nature of our practice because we have many satellite of- fices and the optometrists essentially man these outer offices seeing pa- tients, culling the surgery and pathology and then funneling it into the more central foci where the surgeons practice and perform sur- gery. In other practices it can be just the opposite, there could be more surgeons and just a few optometrists providing primary care. Q. How has your practice benefited from incorporating such a model? Dr. Lane: I think our practice as a result of this is more efficient. We can best utilize the skills and knowl- edge of each group to their best ca- pacity so, we can provide a patient experience that minimizes wait times in our office and it allows us to provide patients with the high quality care that they deserve and have come to expect. Adding optometrists to the prac- tice has given us an expansion of our contact lens services, an expan- sion of our ability to see comprehen- sive patients, and we have been able to extend our hours in different ways—earlier appointments, later appointments and weekend appoint- ments. Dr. Holland: Bringing an op- tometrist into my practice has made me much more efficient in the clinic because I can have the optometrist do a lot of the things that I was doing before. She also runs post-op clinics for me for patients who are a routine post-op check, and those type of patients were really slowing my clinic down and were not allow- ing me to see the patients who had real pathology and other pre-surgical patients. I do significantly more sur- gery and as a team we see many more patients than I was able to see on my own and I'm not seeing any of the primary care or routine post- ops anymore. Dr. Nichamin: First and foremost it's allowed the surgeon to do what the surgeon prefers to be doing, which is caring for a higher-grade pathology of a complex medical and surgical nature. My surgical partners and I were never really interested in pro- viding the more basal primary care services, so we are essentially deliv- ering the care that we've been trained to do and we enjoy that. It makes for a more efficient delivery of care, I think, and certainly in the current medical-economic and socio-economic milieu, which we're facing, the system that we developed somewhat serendipitously has al- lowed us to interface with these other requirements more efficiently today. There are also patient benefits. I think the patients are being served by eye care professionals who are most focused on the particular serv- ices that they're rendering, I think that wait times are down in the of- fices, I think that costs are kept at a minimum through this model and we're able to be very focused and specific with the tasks at hand. Q. Would you recommend others embrace integrated eye care? ADVANCING THE WORLD'S VISION Foundation Funded through a joint effort of the ASCRS Foundation and its industry partners. Abbott Medical Optics • Alcon Bausch & Lomb • CareCredit • Eyemaginations • LCA Vision • Authoritative, easily understood information on LASIK and Premium IOls from ASCRS, the leader in cataract and refractive surgery education • Reduced Chair Time • Better Educated Patients • Realistic Expectations • Features that keep patients on your site Highly Visual and Interactive. Authoritative. Accurate. Balanced. Designed to guide patients to you. Contact ASCRS Communications for more information: jciccone@ascrs.org continued from page 43

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