Welcome to the first column in Insight Media’s Medical Eye Care Practice Success monthly series. Follow along with this three-part series for expert insights on adding or expanding a Medical Eye Care focus to your practice.
Medical eye care represents one of the greatest opportunities for optometrists to provide improved patient care, expand services, and build a thriving practice. As primary eye care providers, we are uniquely positioned to diagnose, treat, and manage ocular conditions. While some practices are thriving in this space, others have only begun to explore the potential of medical eye care.
Many patients require medical eye care, from chronic ocular conditions to urgent vision care needs, which creates opportunities that extend beyond routine care.
Like any essential growth strategy, making medical eye care an integral part of everyday practice begins with recognizing opportunities, educating patients, empowering your team, and creating systems that work.
Here, I address how to expand medical eye care services, including advice on putting systems into place to support the long-term success in the practice.
Start With Ocular Surface Disease
Ocular surface disease (OSD) is an excellent starting point for expanding medical services. OSD and dry eye disease (DED) are common conditions that can significantly affect the quality of life of your patients.
Each comprehensive eye health examination presents an opportunity to identify DED, meibomian gland dysfunction, blepharitis, and ocular allergies. Use a validated questionnaire and ask specific questions about fluctuating vision, burning, tearing, contact lens discomfort, and digital device use. Evaluate the eyelids and lashes, tear film, cornea, and conjunctiva of each patient at every examination. Include your front desk staff, technicians, and opticians, as well, to make sure they inquire about OSD.
Once OSD is diagnosed and treated, add appropriate follow-up visits. Educating patients about the chronic nature of many ocular surface conditions helps set realistic expectations and supports long-term trust and management.
Provide Urgent Eye Care
In 25 years of practice, I have found that providing urgent medical eye care is incredibly rewarding.
Patients can experience many urgent eye care needs that require an eye care provider, including sudden vision changes, painful red eyes, infections, flashes, floaters, and ocular injuries. These situations create opportunities to provide timely, meaningful care.
Consider offering same-day appointments for urgent eye conditions, including:
- Corneal foreign body evaluation and removal
- Corneal abrasions
- Conjunctivitis and other ocular infections
- Sudden vision changes
- New flashes and floaters
- Contact lens-related complications
As primary eye care providers, we have the opportunity to diagnose and treat immediately or refer promptly. Therefore, it’s important to establish clear triage protocols so your team can recognize urgent symptoms and schedule appointments appropriately.
Building relationships with other healthcare providers is essential, as well. Sharing information about your medical eye care services with primary care physicians, pediatricians, neurologists, and rheumatologists, to name a few, strengthens collaboration, increases awareness, and creates new opportunities for referrals and coordinated patient care.
Making medical eye care an integral part of everyday practice begins with recognizing opportunities, educating patients, empowering your team, and creating systems that work.
Empower Your Entire Eye Care Team
Growing medical eye care requires a team approach. Opticians, technicians, and front-office staff play an essential role in recognizing symptoms and reinforcing patient education on eye care services. For example, an optician who hears a patient describe eye pain, goopy eyes, or vision changes can recommend a medical eye examination by an optometrist.
I find it helpful to encourage staff to ask me whether a concern is medical or vision-related rather than making that determination themselves. Training team members to recognize symptoms that warrant further evaluation, without expecting them to diagnose, is essential. Regular team huddles and open communication help build confidence, improve patient access, and ensure continuity of care.
Build Systems That Support Growth
Successful medical eye care requires intentional workflows. Develop protocols and/or scripts for scheduling, documentation, appropriate medical coding and billing, follow-up, and referral coordination.
Also, educate patients about your medical services through your website, social media, office materials, and conversations during comprehensive eye examinations. Build relationships with primary care providers, ophthalmologists, and other healthcare professionals to strengthen collaborative care.
Track metrics, including medical office visits, follow-up referrals, and patient outcomes, to identify opportunities for improvement.
Growth Starts with Improved Care
Expanding medical eye care can improve access to care and serve the unmet needs of your patients. When we recognize opportunities to expand medical eye care, empower our teams, and prioritize patients, we improve outcomes, build stronger relationships, and create meaningful, sustainable practice growth.