The Profitable & Stress-Free Eye Doctor. Dr. Connie Vuong

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      Chapter 4:

      The Source of Eye Doctors’ Problem

      “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

      – Dale Carnegie

      Eliminate Insurance Plans

      This is the question that represents the source of eye doctors’ main concerns: How can we decrease our dependency on insurance companies for income? When I started my private practice, I was accepting all the insurance companies I could get my hands on. When a patient calls us to make an appointment, my staff had to check all the insurance companies to see which one they fall under, and then get the authorization for the service. The exam was performed. The staff assists the patient with the frame selection. The order was placed and the insurance was billed. If all went well, the payment would be received in two to three weeks after the service was rendered. When calculating all the time spent on the tasks just described, it’s difficult to justify that time as being worthwhile. In order to have more time available to focus on the niche of Ortho-K therapy, insurance companies needed to be eliminated one by one.

      Once you have reduced the time you spend on insurance-based patients, you will have plenty of time to focus on increasing your profitability. I started to make a list of all the insurance companies that we accept in our practice. Then, I started to list them in order of the most income it generated to the insurance companies that provide the least payment. As you have guessed already, VSP (Vision Service Plan) was our main bread-and-butter income. It provided the biggest check; 80 percent of all our earning came from VSP payments. We received only about 2-5 percent from Spectera Vision and about 10-15 percent from Davis Vision. After reviewing the statistics, I started to eliminate the insurances that reimburse the least (Spectera). Next, I cut insurance (Davis Vision) that had too many criteria. With Davis Vision, a patient has to choose frames from Davis Vision’s frame selection and all the eyeglasses’ edging jobs had to be sent to them only.