Increasing Revenue with Dark Adaptation

Financial disclaimer: the financial projections and information about billing are for illustration purposes, and actual performance will vary by practice, physician judgment, and patient need.

Practice Challenge

The ever-increasing competition from wholesalers has made it difficult for practices to subsist solely on revenue from sales of frames and lenses. This erosion of the refractive business and the changing landscape of healthcare has shifted our role to primary eye care providers and many of us have transitioned our focus to medical services. It’s not a straight shot and you have to take chances, but it is feasible – not just to make up for lost revenue, but also better serve our patients.

Strategy

Fortunately for me, I adopted the role of primary eye care provider back in the 1990s, when I first started working at Dr. Rinkov’s practice. I’m accustomed to following testing protocols for varying disease states, so adding dark adaptation to our AMD evaluations made perfect sense. Our staff has embraced the role they play in patient care, reviewing charts a week ahead of time, assessing diagnostic needs, and performing dark adaptation testing when indicated, prior to my seeing the patient.

Outcome

I like that I can detect disease when it’s still subclinical. Early identification allows me to intervene and monitor my patients to help them preserve their vision, and our practice benefits from the revenue generated from auxiliary testing and AMD treatment. I admit we haven’t fully adopted nutritional supplements in our office. As care providers, thinking of our practice as a business and selling nutraceuticals does not come naturally. That’ll be our next learning curve! Our numbers have been really good since we implemented dark adaptation testing with the AdaptDx^® and I expect the trend to continue. Getting comfortable with other commercial aspects can only make things better.