Melissa Ciccarelli, COE, practice administrator of Dell Laser Consultants, discusses launching an interventional glaucoma program and the importance of what you need to focus on for its ultimate success. 

For further information, read her article: Fostering an Interventional Glaucoma Culture. 

Transcript edited for clarity.

Hi my name is Melissa Ciccarelli, and I am the practice administrator of Dell Laser Consultants. We are a premium cataract and refractive surgery practice located right here in Austin, Texas, and a thing that a lot of people don't know is that we also offer interventional glaucoma (IG). Today, I want to talk with you about launching that interventional glaucoma program and the importance of what you need to focus on for its ultimate success. 

When launching an interventional glaucoma program I focused on 3 things: communication, scripting, and equipping staff and at the center of all of those 3 things are technicians. Communication is key to success in everything. I do succeeds or fails based on how early and how clearly that message is introduced and technicians are typically the first impression with patients. They're the first to explain what an OCT means, they're the first to introduce the idea that we don't just have to add another drop, and that early conversation sets the psychological tone for everything that follows.

The second is scripting. Scripting doesn't have to sound robotic; it's not about repetition and consistency, it's all about mitigating risk, it's all about creating alignment. In interventional glaucoma, variability can destroy trust and scripting reduces that variability. Strategic scripting ensures that every patient hears that consistent, confident message explained the same way every time.

The third thing is to equip your staff. You can't expect technicians to drive an IG program if they're only trained in specific tasks. They need to understand from start to finish criteria, medication burden impact, and how that early intervention can actually change the long-term outcome. When technicians are empowered with that type of clinical knowledge they don't just see patients in rooms, they become advocates for these patients and they can help with your clinical conversion rates.

Technicians are really the operational engine behind the success of interventional glaucoma and when that communication from the technicians is intentional, scripting is disciplined, and staff are trained fully, then interventional glaucoma becomes consistent in your practice, efficient, and scalable—not just here and there. And that's really the difference between adding a procedure and building a successful program.

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