Innovative Innovations for Optometric Practice - DISEASE

David Kading, OD, FAAO, FCLSA

Descriptions:

This course highlights a new age of eyecare practice. This is the age where technology makes a practitioner better and more connected to their patients. Retinal photography and OCT imaging have replaced pressures and CD rations as a standard and digital recalls have replaced Garfield post cards for patients making technology out mainstay. This course reviews these and other new innovations that are pressure our profession forward. These include but are not limited to: wide field retinal photography, outsourcing or billing and patient recalls, OCT for retinal and contact lens fitting, tear analysis for inflammation, Online patient access and communications, and others.

Objectives:

Following this course attendees will:

  1. Understand the progressions of eyecare as they are tied to innovations
  2. Be better capable of assessing their technology innovation adoption
  3. Decide if technology innovations are advantageous to their practice positioning or if they will be negative at this time
  4. Be able to contemplate various newer technology systems to see if they might help aid them in their patient care
  5. Comprehend the anterior segment innovations
  6. Comprehend the posterior segment innovations
  7. Be able to understand eyecare advancements in phases and where we are entering with the next phase in order to be prepared

Outline

  1. Technology to start
  2. What technology looked like over time
  3. How our profession has always used technology to better serve patients from its inception
  4. A look at the history of optometry and our desire for gadgets
  1. Technology of Old
  2. What has been advanced over the years
  3. Eg. Topography from keratometry
  4. What has this type of technology advanced us to
  5. What has made minimal changes
  6. Does it need to change
  7. Should it stay the same
  1. Technology of New
  2. Advantages
  3. This new technology allows us to forsee areas of vision and eye health that were otherwise not visable
  4. Disadvantages
  5. has to be adopted
  6. This time
  7. Takes money.
  8. How do we review the ROI to decide if we can afford technology?
  9. How do we decide if it will increase our patient care?
  10. How do we decide if our practice is ready for new technology
  1. Implementation Strategies
  2. Calculate ROI
  3. Estimate the number of patients that you would need to do this on in order to pay for the machine
  4. Estimate the number of visits that you will do in order to make additional revenue or break even
  5. Calculate patient volume
  6. How many patients will benefit from this service
  7. What will the benefit truly be to these patients
  8. Will the benefit be more towards the doctor or will it bring a betterment to the patients physical or emotional health
  9. Calculate improvement in patient care
  10. Will this new technology improve my patient quality of care
  11. Will this new technology bring about better speed for my visit and allow me to care for more patients
  12. Preparing your team
  13. Discussing the disease state around the technology
  14. Meeting to discuss the technology
  15. Bringing the equipment into the office for training
  16. Setting up a schedule around the new technology
  17. Preparing and announcing to patients
  18. Process of how to use technology for announcing
  19. Use of new and old technology for announcement
  20. How to share technology and improvements so they do not just sounds like a sales pitch for something new that you want to try out for the patient for your own benefit
  1. Technological improvements
  2. Quality and Wide Field photography
  3. Optos
  4. Zeiss
  5. Differences and strengths of each
  6. Harvard Study on Diabetic Retinopathy V. Observer
  7. Imaging allows us a longer view and less doctor time for the technological aspect so we can make better clinical decisions
  8. Where wide field fits into the office
  9. As a measurement of screening
  10. As a measurement of advanced imaging
  11. Auto-Fluorescence
  1. Anterior Segment for Dry Eye
  2. Dry Eye
  3. Technology with non-invasive tear break up time
  4. How TBUT and NITBUT are different
  5. Less invasive to patient
  6. More comfortable
  7. More repeatability
  8. More reliability
  9. Interferometry and ability to view lipid layer over the course of years
  10. What is a normal amount
  11. What does this tell us and how does it change treatments
  12. When should we consider doing this
  13. How do we expect it to change
  14. Rubbing eyes
  15. After treatment
  16. Inflammadry Measurements
  17. What is the test
  18. When should it be done
  19. Is there a way to fool the test
  20. Reliability
  21. repeatability
  22. Ability to measure tear sample for inflammatory markers
  23. What markers
  24. TearLab
  25. Ability to measure for Osmolarity Issues
  26. When the test is inaccurate
  27. What the test is telling you
  28. Meibomian Gland Expresser
  29. Handheald instrument
  30. Used during slit lamp
  31. Exerts 1.25g/mm2 of pressure
  32. Same amount of blink
  33. Ability to detect limited amounts of oil secretions
  34. Tells you if your MGD treatments worked
  35. OCT technology to measure corneal epithelial thickness
  36. Detects amount of corneal edema
  37. Helps detect dry eye
  38. Can be used to gage type of treatments
  39. Freshcoat
  40. Miro 128
  1. Anterior Segment Imaging
  2. OCT imaging for detection of early Keratoconus
  3. OCT imaging for sagittal depth and how this will aid in special contact lens fitting
  4. Corneal thickness mapping
  5. Ability to look at thickness over various areas and detect disease earlier
  6. Benefit for kids with KCN
  7. May help to stop the disease by the use of corneal cross linking
  1. Meibography
  2. Various types of instruments bring about ability ot measure
  3. Retinal camera
  4. Topography
  5. Specific imaging systems
  6. OCT
  7. Helps to understand how atrphy is occurring to the glands
  1. Smart Phone Utilization for Eye Examination Advancements
  2. Contact Lens Software
  3. Exam Software
  4. Social Media for education
  1. Outsourcing tasks for better patient experience
  2. How does billing outsourcing work
  3. Understand your key areas of billing
  4. Do you do mostly exams
  5. How does your products come into play
  6. How does your medical come into play
  7. Can you use a company that understands your EMR
  8. RevCycle is attached to Revolution EHR for instance
  9. Benefit of using NON-Optometry Companies
  10. Benefit of using optometry companies
  11. What other things can be outsources
  12. Phone Calls
  13. Use of companies not in your office to answer the phone
  14. Use of people that live close by
  15. Use of people that live far away
  16. What special things do you need for this
  17. Phone system
  18. Good internet connection
  19. Marketing
  20. Social Media
  21. Use of services
  22. Use of internal teams
  23. Print Campaigns
  24. Post cards
  25. Letters
  26. Email marketing
  27. What works
  28. What can bring an roi
  29. How to use email marketing to introduce innovations
  30. Outsourcing phone and recalls
  31. Brings better awareness to the team at hand and can aid in more pointed technology advancements for the team at hand.