Eyeworld

OPHTHALMOLOGY BUSINESS 70 January 2018 by John B. Pinto and Corinne Wohl, MHSA, COE Optimizing optometric relationships "Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings … it is something we do for our clients—not to our clients." —Zig Ziglar A side from your relation- ships with patients, staff, and third-party payers, there is no more practi- cally useful and import- ant party in an ophthalmologist's practice life than the community's optometrists. Whether your relationships involve formal comanagement of a referred patient's surgical care or the complete transfer of care from optometrist to ophthalmologist, getting on well with your optome- trist colleagues is a critical feature of most thriving practices. Surgeons and their practices tend to fall into four broad camps when it comes to OD relations: I. Openly adversarial: This is the rare surgeon who thinks (either sincerely or with a prejudice borne of competitive insecurity) that optometrists' licensed scope of practice exceeds their training and ability and that ODs should either be eliminated or supervised more closely by MDs. (If you think this way, you will not find much to like in this month's column.) II. Optometry neutral: These are surgeons and practices that receive a few referrals from ODs, and they do not try to reach out for referral support. They may comanage the occasional case or simply accept referrals but cleave to a policy of not sharing postop- erative care. III. Moderately engaging: In such practices, only light efforts are applied to develop and preserve relationships with the communi- ty's optometric providers. In such practices, typically 10% to 30% of new patients come in from local optometrists. IV. Avidly comanaging: These are practices that typically source more than 50% of their surgical cases to optometric referral. The practices of avidly comanaging surgeons are among the most profitable in the country, espe- cially when measured in terms of net profit per physician hour. A patient visit to surgical case ratio of five or lower is not unusual (when 25 is the norm in average settings). Such practices tend to be those that (a) are located in the center of rural pockets with high population to provider ratios and little competition for referrals, or (b) are urban and suburban prac- tices putting significant doctor and staff resources into outreach. No matter your current level, I to IV, if you would like to improve optometric relationships, here are 12 activities that can help. 1. Research to learn where your new patient referrals are coming from now. Unless you have a baseline of average referrals per month per optometrist, you won't grasp if your deeper outreach efforts are gaining traction. Ideally, you should track new patient sourc- ing data monthly by provider, which will give you a tool to see if referrals are falling below average baselines and when you should call optometrists who have slipped away from you. To the point: Simple practice tune-ups for complex times

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