To grow a successful practice, it’s essential to connect with, bond with, and understand your patients. At times, what will separate you from your competitors is not the experience or the education that you have but the compassion and understanding that you demonstrate for your patients’ concerns.

A perfect example of this is when you have a new patient in your chair who has a history of contact lens use. While there may be various factors at play, if patients found their way to your office, chances are that their previous practitioner didn’t do enough to convince them to stay. To avoid making the same mistake, it’s important to understand more than your patients’ slit lamp findings.

The best way to get this information and to tackle any future challenges is to address concerns right up front. Effective use of your case history can reveal potential road blocks. Although this one-on-one time with your patients is important, it’s easier said than done. With a waiting room full of patients, it’s not realistic to think that you can sit and chat for an unlimited amount of time. Let’s review a few ways to support patient communication without losing chair time.

While Patients Are in the Office

Investing in a strong technician can help in this regard. With proper training, your technician can screen and document concerns before the exam even starts.

After the exam, the technician can spend a sufficient amount of time training and educating patients about their specific struggles with contact lenses. When implemented correctly, this system will allow you to maintain a good patient flow without sacrificing patient communication.

If additional staffing is not possible for your practice, you can receive the same benefit by providing reading material/pamphlets that educate patients about concerns and possible pitfalls. Pre-recorded videos are another option. Whether creating application and removal videos or other types of instructional videos, this upfront effort can go a long way in continuing patient communication outside of the exam room.

Following Up

Let’s review a few specific tactics that you can employ to keep your patients returning.

1. Reach out to patients a few days after their fitting to make sure that they’re OK and to address any concerns that they may have.
2. Schedule follow-up appointments to make sure that their lenses are fitting properly and providing good vision.
3. Send out monthly or bi-monthly e-blasts providing more resources and information to help them maintain their lenses.
4. Designate a staff member whom they can contact if they have if any issues or concerns.

Keep the Lines of Communication Open

Even though contact lenses have numerous benefits for many different types of wearers, patients notoriously seem to have a way of finding issues before reaping the long-term benefits. Yes, we always want to focus on honing our clinical skills; however, I would argue that building our communication skills is just as important.

As I’ve noted, the communication piece doesn’t fall completely on the practitioner. Getting the staff involved is equally important. Practices that genuinely connect with their patients—on a personal level—have patients who will return year after year. CLS