Editorial Preview

July/August 2021

The Administrative Eyecare Jul/Aug 2021 cover story focuses on resiliency and staff engagement. Additional articles address other critical topics such as how to use data to prove a point to practice owners, the value of balance sheets for indicating the health of the business, using time and attendance sheets to ensure staff accountability, evolutions in EHR systems, strategies for reducing audit risk, solutions for improving technician efficiency, and much more. The deadline to reserve space for this issue is May 24, 2021, and materials are due June 7, 2021.

Cover story: Resiliencies for personal sustainability and staff engagement during COVID-19

Synopsis: Ophthalmic administrators will manage practices in a “new normal” environment, one hallmarked by issues of physician retirement, employee retention, telehealth and other innovations, and a decrease in patient volume due to the need for potentially long-term social distancing. This article explores ongoing strategies for creating the resiliency administrators and their staffs need to cope, adapt, and thrive.

Advanced administration: Using data to prove your point—Effective use of data with providers and staff

Synopsis: Finding ways to communicate with physicians regarding various clinic issues is often difficult. However, accurate and reproducible data to prove a hypothesis will likely give administrators’ recommendations more weight in physicians’ eyes.

Advice for new administrators: Sandpaper and grit—A management metaphor

Synopsis: Whether enacted by a master carpenter or world-class manager, the skillful application of abrasives is an important trade secret for achieving desired management outcomes.

Business operations: Balance sheet management—Understanding the health of your business

Synopsis: The balance sheet provides a complete picture of a practice’s financial standing. This article examines the important role the balance sheet plays in understanding, updating, and evaluating the company's well-being, ultimately allowing administrators to make better business decisions.

Customer care: Improving change, stat!

Synopsis: Approaching change from the perspective of those one serves can provide the breakthrough an administrator needs to thrive in any time of transition.

Human resources: A “time and attendance policy”—Raising the bar of accountability for staff

Synopsis: Perhaps the most basic of all management tasks is to simply ensure there is adequate, trained staff to help support patient care. Along with a well-crafted job description, a “Time and Attendance” policy is the foundational framework that helps create and sustain accountability of all staff, thereby increasing productivity.

InfoTech: EHRs—Evolution, innovation, and efficiency

Synopsis: Prompted by the pandemic, EHR vendors are revisiting the backlog of features ophthalmologists need. This article explores EHR evolution in six key areas: patient portals, telehealth, stability, efficiency, integration, and decision making.

Leadership log: "We know what we know."

Synopsis: An administrator shares how his embrace of these five very powerful words helped guide the practice through the tumultuous advance of COVID-19, influencing how staff handled and reshaped infection and information control, including significantly changing the practice’s public messaging.

Marketing: An untapped referral source—7 tips to engage your current patients

Synopsis: It can be easy to forget about the referral stream that is already in the office: current patients. New competition is constantly coming to town. This article suggests seven strategies for helping patients feel more appreciated, and inevitably more allied, to the practice.

Technicians: The quest for tech efficiency post-COVID-19

Synopsis: After discovering that average work-up times had increased by more than five minutes per technician—a 25% increase in technician labor—this administrator shares her quest to find a solution for better efficiency.

ASC: COVID-19’s lessons learned

Synopsis: After surveying ASC staffs to assess burnout, this consultant found a significant drop in morale. Here, her suggestions for what administrators can and should do to be supportive, ease staff burdens, and ensure continuity and stability going forward.

Retina: Do you know your audit risk? Tips to increase awareness

Synopsis: When it comes to the likelihood of passing an audit, worrying that chart documentation will not support the CPT codes billed signal that it is time to be proactive—i.e., perform internal audits, request an external audit, and use the information garnered to not only show that the practice's compliance plan is active, but also to provide some peace of mind if (or when) the practice receives an audit request letter.

COE Corner: The proof is in the persistence

Synopsis: Dogged persistence in acquiring professional knowledge and credentials reassured this administrator—and the practice owner-doctor—that she was qualified for her position, despite her lack of formal education or a college degree.

Making the case: Work smarter, not harder—Managing time efficiently

Synopsis: Effective time management tactics can help take an expanding “to-do” list and make it “doable” with little extra effort. Here, a list of tactics designed to assist the overwhelmed administrator.

Peer to Peer: What supports does your practice offer for encouraging resilience in your staff?

Synopsis: Practice administrators share their reflections.

Space reservation deadline: May 24, 2021

Materials due: June 7, 2021

For advertising information, contact:

Jessica Donohoe, Director of Special Projects

703-788-5764 | jessica@eyeworld.org

Joe Dooley, Sales Representative

571-212-1925 | joe@eyeworld.org