Hi all, hope you're having a great weekend. So, I've been hired to manage the optical side of an optometry practice, with a focus on increasing sales and profitability. I've worked with 20+ practices, and the way they do things at this one seems a bit odd.
So, considering the points below, would you be so kind as to tell me whether this stuff is weird/not a good idea, or it's just me.

  • They have one OD working at a time, but generally four or five techs. The OD's have a tech "write" for them, which to me seems a waste. I've worked with ophthalmologists who didn't need a "writer" in the room.
  • They do fields on everyone, take pictures, dilate, etc...Which is good, but it seems to me if they want to make more money they should generally just refract 'em, have a look for abnormalities, and get the next patient in the chair (I know I'll be scolded for saying that, sorry).
  • With all these techs, they still want me to (a) sell and dispense glasses (b) choose, order, and price frames and lenses (c) train staff to sell better (d) cut and surface all in-house jobs (and jobs from three other practices) (e) make appointments (f) call for appointment reminders (g) check out patients, even medical-only patients (h) submit claims...Now, this would be fine except that it's a busy practice (approx. 30 appointments per day), and I'm the only optician. I'm considering telling them it's just not possible to come in and re-vamp their inventory, re-structure pricing, train staff, etc., and that it would be better to let the techs do tech stuff (instead of selling glasses when it's busy in the dispensary) and the optician do optician stuff. Am I being a spoiled brat?
  • Davis...This isn't an "is it odd" question, but rather a "what's the best approach?" question. Is it better to sell a Davis frame or say a 400$ in-house frame considering "standard" mark-ups and Davis discounts?
  • Pupillometers. They don't have one. I don't need one, but they have techs selling glasses (when I'm tied up on the phone making a damned appointment, for instance), and I've seen that everyone measures PD differently and when I check the recorded PD's from prior visits, they're rarely accurate.
  • Seg heights...Again, untrained techs selling glasses...They do seg heights of 11 with an ellipse, which I think is a bad thing. I said it might (might) be okay if they bump the add, but they didn't know what I meant.

Whew, that's a lot! Sorry for the long post, and thanks so much for taking the time to consider my questions. Hopefully I can help someone out here in the near future!