AFTER RETURNING from state, regional, or national meetings, I am always met with a few emails. It isn’t a surprise, as during my lectures I encourage people to direct message or email me.

These practitioners are my heroes. They saw something in my lecture that they either were not doing or were not doing as well as they wanted to do, and they asked how to go about bringing the innovation into their practice. What a concept!

The reality is that many innovations or new services fall flat on their faces due to a lack of proper implementation. These innovations include new glaucoma technologies like optical coherence tomography, myopia management, orthokeratology, scleral lenses, presbyopia drops, etc.

Following are four simple steps to get you started on implementing these new innovations:

1. Create space in your schedule.

If you have gaps in your schedule that you want to fill, this is perfect. Without gaps in your schedule, you need to do a revenue-per-encounter breakdown and figure out what each patient encounter brings in for your office. To do this, count the total number of patient encounters (paid or unpaid) and divide this by the revenue generated over that time period.

Next, is the revenue generated from the new service going to be higher than the encounter-based cost? If not, it may be better to refer these patients out of the office. If it is higher, then consider looking for ways to open your schedule. It may be time to hire an associate practitioner, or it may be time to look at how much each insurance plan is paying you and drop the low-paying options.

2. What does your patient base look like?

In a geriatric practice, bringing in myopia management might be more challenging than it is for a family practice with a bell-shape-curved patient base. Also, consider the group of people that you have and the number of treatments, service visits, or sales needed to pay for the new service. Can the machine or widget be paid off within a year? Are there enough patients to use the widget with regular frequency? This could be one time per day for some treatment devices or four times per day for certain diagnostics.

3. Do you have a team support person who can be your champion?

One of the most common things seen in new implementations is that the team is not on board. Often within a practice ecosystem, implementation can turn into an us-versus-them situation. Getting as many of “them” on board can be a huge asset. Look in the team for a person who can help explain things to patients and other team members. Find a way for that person to be involved in as many of the steps as possible. Have them help with entry into the electronic health record, with pricing, and with marketing. Having them involved from the start will help the initiative succeed once it is time for implementation.

4. Do you have FAQs and paperwork to help explain new costs or features?

Many practitioners are paralyzed by all the questions that they might get or the paperwork that may be needed before they go live. At my practice, we have a policy for new implementations that we are generous with patients—the first time. It is important to plan for the most obvious contingencies but realize that we are going to miss about 5% of the nuances. When these situations come up for a patient, lean toward generosity and use it as a learning encounter. Then, add it to the FAQ or paperwork for the next time.

Implementation and change are huge for offices. They take us into the next wave in clinical practice. Consider these steps to make innovation and implementation a smoother process. CLS