Technology is all around us.
The optometric practice is no exception.
We sat down with a highly esteemed optometric influencer, Aaron Lech, OD owner at ClearVue Eye Care, during Vision Expo East, and asked him to share some thoughts on technology in the optometric practice.
When starting in practice, it is common to suddenly not have access to all of the diagnostic equipment you had in school. Many practices lack some of the latest technology optometry schools have available to them, while some practices might not have a large medical patient base, and therefore never invested in ophthalmic technology. Regardless of the situation, there is no question how important technology has become in healthcare.
Technology has allowed optometry practices to:
- Provide care to more patients
- Examine the eye in more detail
- Provide better management than ever before
As a new graduate, you very well could find yourself in a position where you might be making a recommendation to a senior doctor or practice owner to invest in new diagnostic equipment. It can be easy to understand the value technology can have within a practice, but before suggesting a practice owner make a significant investment in purchasing equipment, there are several things you must be prepared to do.
1) Understand where the current practice is and where the practice owner wants to go.
If a practice is referring out a lot of ocular disease because technology is not available to manage it, then this could be an opportunity to show value new equipment could bring. You can better understand where a practice owner’s interests are by asking a lot of open ended questions.
- How do you feel about glaucoma management?
- What is the biggest challenge with ocular disease?
- What kind of practice is this, and do you see it changing down the road?
- Where does medical eyecare fit within this practice?
2) Make suggestions in context of the practice’s vision
Once you have a better understanding of the practice owner, and thus the vision and goal of the practice, you can then make informed suggestions. Once you know what the philosophy of the practice owner is, you can use your understanding of technology to provide a solution or a stepping stone to meeting a goal set forth by the practice owner that coincides with the vision and culture of the practice.
Read more on how OCT can be utilized in your practice to manage ocular disease here.
