Dr. Keyur Patel, a practicing optometrist, educator, and contact lens expert, begins by stating that the most common hindrance to starting specialty clinics is arranging finances. He leads us to a discussion about the price and value of our services.

We learn about what factors to consider for our price and what factors to consider for the value we provide. Dr. Patel mentions that most optometrists running specialty clinics don’t ask for the fair price for the value that they provide.

We use dry eye specialty clinics as a model to understand how an individual practitioner can go about setting one up. We learn a bit about Dry Eyes definition, diagnosis, and management. We learn that an optometrist can manage 13 out of the 20 recommended treatment modalities. We know about the need to invest in diagnostic tools like a slit-lamp and an imaging system.

The imaging system can be simple but is immensely helpful in record-keeping and patient education. We learn about the cost of consumables like fluorescein, lissamine green strips, etc. We also learn about the cost and importance of advanced diagnostics. Dr. Keyur Patel then walks us through all the possible costs associated with a specialty clinic setup and how to minimize them.

We learn about the basic and advanced treatments that we can conduct and factor costs for the same.

Next, we learn about providing the right products for the treatment and delivering them to patients. Dr. Patel stresses the importance of networking and continuing education to be updated with the most advanced practices.

Finally, we learn about promoting our practices on multiple fronts. The session ends with a question and answers segment for the live audience.

References

Papers

Muula AS. Medicine and money: friends or foe? Mens Sana Monogr. 2006 Jan;4(1):78-88.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22013334/

Craig JP, Nichols KK, Akpek EK, Caffery B, Dua HS, Joo CK, Liu Z, Nelson JD, Nichols JJ, Tsubota K, Stapleton F. TFOS DEWS II Definition and Classification Report. Ocul Surf. 2017 Jul;15(3):276-283.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28736335/

Jones L, Downie LE, Korb D, Benitez-Del-Castillo JM, Dana R, Deng SX, Dong PN, Geerling G, Hida RY, Liu Y, Seo KY, Tauber J, Wakamatsu TH, Xu J, Wolffsohn JS, Craig JP. TFOS DEWS II Management and Therapy Report. Ocul Surf. 2017 Jul;15(3):575-628.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28736343/

Websites

TFOS DEWS Report

https://www.tfosdewsreport.org/