As an eye doctor, you entered optometry with the highest confidence that you will change many lives with your professional care. You perform eye examinations to detect, diagnose, and then treat your patients’ conditions. These patients accept your recommendations and they return to you for further care. Now more than ever before, eye care providers face challenges that are slowly endangering their existence.
Patients are utilizing their insurance, pay copays, getting their eye exams, and they leave your office. On their way out, they ask for a copy of the prescription so they can order glasses and contact lenses online. Over time you are noticing that most patients are coming in just for the exams. Your income has been significantly reduced compared to just a few years prior. Just the other day, you heard a colleague say that there is an app that just came out where patients can look at their phone and the app will measure their eyeglasses prescription for them. Patients also start looking online to self-diagnose their eye conditions. They no longer need you as their eye care provider. On top of that, your local competitors started to give massive discounts to attract more patients to their office. You think to yourself, “Should I do the same?” What a dilemma!
The Story of a Disillusioned Eye Doctor
Graduation day was one of the best days of your life! Now, finally, you are ready to spread your wings of knowledge and go out into the world and change lives for the better. You received one of the highest badges of honor, the title of doctor. Your chest almost exploded with pride. Your parents’ teary eyes told the whole story – they were proud beyond words! So joyful, they probably could not sleep for days.
You were so confident that you would help more people by having your very own practice. You called it, “My Baby!” The grand opening of your baby, your practice, was one of the most memorable days of your life! Friends and family members came. They used their insurance, ordered eyeglasses, and paid for all the services. They referred their friends and co-workers. Your practice was a buzzing place of excitement. “Life is great!” you thought to yourself.
One day, two years after you had that special day, you came to work and noticed your office is not buzzing but were much quieter. Maybe things were settling down. Maybe it was just slow because of tax season. It will pick up you thought to yourself. Unwilling to accept it that business had been slowing down, you started to count the number of years. It has been like this for the last four years! How long will this still be going on? What will happen if this scenario was left alone to run its course? Closing the door to your practice would feel like letting it die a painful death.
For some time, it was me who had been going through the scenario I laid out above. I, too, had been there and done that. Only my agony was much longer than four years. I needed to set my stubbornness aside and start facing the fact that things needed to change. I needed to face my fears to save My Baby! Are you willing to do the same?
Face the Fear and Go into Action
If practicing general optometry is all you have been accustomed to you may be asking yourself these questions:
“What else can I do? Do I have to start over?
Do I have to learn a new skill for this new specialty? Where do I find the time?
Do I need to invest in more expensive equipment?
How do I find all those new patients?
Am I good enough?”
Questions that raise concerns race through your brain. You almost feel an anxiety attack coming on. You see, the more you worry the more you realize that you cannot stay in your current situation. The longer you wait, the more you are mentally exhausted thinking about the terrible situation you are in. As time goes on, resources will run low and your financial situation will worsen. You might need to sell your business or go work for someone. You might even need to close the practice and just walk away from it. Thereafter, you will never be able to look back on living the dream of being an entrepreneur.
There are, however, actions you can take to change. First, you got to change your mindset. You were trained on so many different specialties while in professional school. You have those skills already. You just need to put them into the right gear. Second, there are numerous eye doctors who have extremely successfully transitioned from practicing general to specialty optometry. Plan to be part of the specialty academy that you can start your training with. There are mentoring and coaching programs that can assist you to start your journey. You do not have to do this alone. Thirdly, after all the right foundation is set into its rightful place, you can with confidence start recommending your specialty to all nearsighted patients. These patients will appreciate the much-needed service that you offer. Once they have enjoyed the benefits of clear vision, they will start recommending you to their family and friends. Before you know it, you will be known as the expert and your practice will thrive.
Reap the Reward
Here is a glimpse of what your career and private life would be like once your specialty service is fully implemented in your happy-centered practice. You get to choose the days and the hours you can see your patients. It is possible to see patients only on three half-days. Each half-day consist of three to four hours of work a day. This will total at nine to sixteen hours per week. When compared with your general optometry practice, you will see fewer patients but earn significantly more. By providing the much-needed concierge type of specialty services, patients are willing to pay out of pocket with the amount that is comparable to orthodontics services. With so much extra free time, you will be able to enjoy more quality time with your loved ones.
The Successful Strategies Within This Book
Step-by-step proven strategies are detailed within this book. These strategies are the strong foundation for the building block of achieving a successful specialty practice. Once the decision is made to provide specialty Ortho-K therapy, success is just around the corner. When deciding to build an Ortho-K specialty practice, knowing all the right reasons for the service and the benefits is critical. Learning the effective skills to deliver the message of how dangerous the myopia epidemic is can effectively change lives. Parents will readily choose your Ortho-K program to save their children’s eyesight. You will become familiar with how and where to obtain the proper instruments and equipment for your patients’ optimum outcome. You will gain the skills of knowing which Ortho-K lens companies are best suited for any type of eye conditions. Detailed techniques on teaching patients the Ortho-K lens care will be taught and mastered by you and all your staff personals. The flow of Ortho-K patients’ service will be shown to you in easy, practical steps. By putting the continuum of care in your practice, you will ensure a profitable practice for years to come. Ultimately, your greatest reward in your career life is making sight-saving contributions to so many young lives.
Chapter 2:
My Solution of Giving the Gift of Sight
“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.”
– Napoleon Hill
I remember that summer day so vividly! I turned 16 and I just survived a major car accident! That Monday, I passed my driver’s test and right away on that Friday, I drove my friends to the movie theatre. On the way there, as I was turning left at an intersection, I heard a loud crash. Thereafter, I was unconscious for a few minutes. When I woke up my car was totaled. Kaput! I realized that my vision was so weak that I did not see the oncoming car as I was turning left. After the car accident, my dad took me to an eye doctor. She said that my vision was 20/400, with a prescription of -3.00.
I was heart-broken! Not only did I damage my first car beyond repair, I also found out that my eyes were so bad that I will be depending on glasses for the rest of my life. My dad was very calm. He was not upset.