Debbie Davis discusses her practice's cataract patient education program.
Transcript edited for clarity.
Hi, my name is Debbie Davis and I am the CEO of Atwal Eye Care and Buffalo Ambulatory Surgery Center. Today, I am going to talk a little bit about our cataract patient education program. We started this program a couple of years ago to empower our patients to make the best cataract decision that they can make when they are in the clinic. It starts with pre-education. We make sure that all of our social platforms are developed to educate patients as well as our website. And we also offer monthly cataract lunch and learns where we have people sign up and come into our office, receive a little boxed lunch, and learn about cataracts. For example, they learn about what a cataract is and the process of cataract surgery, their cataract evaluation, and all the options that they have available to them, including laser-assisted cataract surgery and the lens options—multifocal, toric, expanded depth of focus lenses, and Light Adjustable Lenses.
There's a lot of information that goes into these programs and it really helps to better educate the patient before they're in the chair for their cataract evaluation. Once they come in for their evaluation, when they call to make an appointment, we tell the patient that they are going to receive a pre-education call to go over what a cataract is and all of the options they have available, including financing options for those out-of-pocket lenses. And the patients really love this. They get a one-on-one on the phone with an educator and they're able to ask further questions. The educator on the phone will ask what hobbies they have, what they do daily, what activities they love to do, and what they're doing with their vision on a daily basis. So they can input that data into our EMR system and the patient, when they come in for their workup and their exam with the doctor, already have a really good understanding of what the patient expectations are for cataract surgery.
When they come in for their evaluation, we do a detailed, thorough workup and we do a lot of testing on the patient so that we know what options are best suited for them. They meet with one of our lens counselors who will answer any questions that they may have, and then they also watch a cataract video. When the patient is done, they will meet with the surgeon who will go over all of their testing and if they have any underlying health conditions that would preclude them with a certain option, and he'll make a recommendation to them. And then the patient will schedule their surgery while they're in the office unless they want to go home and think about it. And we have found that these programs and the way we do our pre-education with our patients really empowers them to make the best decision for their vision.
Empowering them, we feel, really has increased patient satisfaction and has made for some very happy patients.
