Rebuilding Our Practices By Building Patient Relationships

By: Michael Hay, O.D.

Building patient relationships is an important part of what we do as optometrists or at least it should be. Today, eye care is a very saturated market. It is comprised of private practice, corporate optometry, ophthalmology, private equity and more. And it doesn't stop there. We are also competing against a lot of the disrupters like 1-800 Contacts, GlassesOn, 6over6 and Simple Contacts to name a few. Somehow, we as optometrists, must do something to stand out in this market. Because of the recent events with COVID-19, a lot of practices have either shut down temporarily or have been limited to urgent and emergent care. Patients are going to be more cost conscious than ever before because of the pandemic and stay at home orders. Money is going to be tight. So now more than ever, we need to get back to grassroots optometry. Due to costs associated with marketing, this is the time we need to wow these patients to keep them in our practice.

Most practices spend around 3% of their gross revenues on marketing the practice. Marketing the practice, however, shouldn’t end when you drive or attempt to drive those patients to your practice. A recent study showed that forty of patients are not loyal to their doctor for a number of reasons. With the recent pandemic that number may rise as patients look for ways to decrease costs across the board. Therefore, marketing needs to continue from the time the patient calls the office to schedule the appointment to the time the patient is finished with their appointment. Or what I call building the patient relationship.

Building these patient relationships will help assure that the patient will return to the practice for future care. It can also be a great referral system. This is because patients who are happy with the care they received are more likely to recommend a friend or family member to the practice. In fact, patients trust recommendations from someone even if it is someone they don’t know. That is why Google and Yelp reviews are so popular. I know a lot of doctors dislike those negative reviews but we need to use those reviews to make the patient experience better.

I believe building the patient relationship starts before they are even a patient. This starts with the receptionist. The receptionist is the first contact that person will have with your office. Your practice can spend as much as it wants on marketing and have it collapse with that first contact. It is important to have a very well trained and knowledgeable receptionist with an outgoing personality. The receptionist needs to have a great demeanor on the phone but also needs to be able to answer questions about medical insurance and vision care plans. Most patients will also have questions about routine exams, as well as contact lens evaluations and office visits. In the high tech world we live in, many practices have websites that the patient can scheduled their appointment with. As with the receptionist, the website should be informative and be able to answer any questions the prospective patient may have. Success here is when the patient schedules the appointment.

I’ve been fortunate in the positions I’ve held to be able to evaluate ODs performing exams and mentor them. One of the biggest flaws I see with ODs is that they don’t show their personality. I’ve sat in on a lot of exams that were quite frankly mundane.  Patients don’t want mundane. They want someone with personality. Sometimes this may not be so easy. In fact, I’m an introvert but I’ve worked hard to be an extrovert in that exam room. How did I do that? I became an expert in what I do. I am also confident in my demeanor with the patient which builds confidence with the patient. I also want patients to know a little bit about me and I want to know a little bit about them. It shows the human side of you which I believe also builds confidence and therefore patients will feel comfortable asking questions. 

I also spend time explaining what I’m doing during every procedure. As if they’ve never had an eye exam before. It’s amazing how many times I heard a patient state “no one has ever explained that before”. Also, whether I’m discussing eyeglasses or contact lenses with patients, I go over all the options with the patient and based on their needs I let them know what I recommend. It doesn’t stop there however. I bring them into the decision making and ultimately, I let them make the decision. How many times have you heard… “the doctor said I needed bifocals” or “the doctor didn’t listen to me”. I’ve heard it all too often. Another point I think is important is not to overuse clinical terms. I explain in terms that they will understand without being condescending. Once again you are building that patient relationship. 

Here is one example. Recently, I had a patient who came to my office for an eye exam. After talking to the patient through the exam process, I found out that he had just relocated from New Jersey which is where I grew up. We both also liked the New York Yankees as well. He told me a story about a boy named Ed Lucas that he grew up with. As a youngster he was playing street ball and was hit with a ball between the eyes and became blind. He stated that a book had been written about him called “Seeing Home”. So later that day, I ordered the book on Amazon and I had it a couple days later. Such an inspirational story. This all came from my interaction with this patient. Going beyond the chair. A couple of weeks later, he came by the office to say hello. I was with a patient but he left a note on the back of one of my business cards. It said, “Yankee friend from N.J”. t definitely put a smile on my face and I realized that he would be coming back to me for his eye care. He would also recommend our practice because I had built that patient relationship. Something we shouldn’t discount. Especially today.

So, as we return to full time practice from this pandemic, our practices will be on shortened schedules which means seeing less patients. Less patients means less revenue so we need to do all we can do to keep patients flowing to our practice and building patient relationships is a great way to make this come to fruition.