When a patient enters your office they first experience your waiting room and front desk team. As an OD, you don't always get to witness these interactions and the experience that the patient has. After the front desk the patient usually starts with pre-testing before heading into the exam room, and before the patient leaves your office some time is hopefully spent in your dispensary. To make sure that your patient experience is up to par it's important to analyze each of these areas and not just the time spent with you in the exam room.

Making big changes in any business doesn't happen over night. But, in order to keep your practice rolling full steam ahead it's important to take a critical look at the things that could be holding your practice back from increased innovation and profits. Today we want to talk about five things that many successful practices refuse to do so you can think hard about changes you can make in your practice that could have a lasting effect.

Whether you're a student preparing for a career in optometry, an OD with 5 years under your belt, or an OD with 30 years of experience, maintaining relationships with peers and mentors in the industry is an important part of your career. But, a lot of times it's easier said than done when it comes to finding the right mentor, or becoming a mentor yourself.

Being the owner of your own business, it's easy to want to try and do it all yourself. But, to run an efficient and profitable eyecare practice, you need to learn how to best delegate the tasks in your office to be more productive and to see as many patients as you can each day. For certain personality types, the process of letting go and delegating can be tricky. We've found 5 strategies that will help you let go of certain tasks in your office and how to hand them off to others in order to be more productive.

Scribes in the medical field are typically there to assist doctors with documentation and clerical responsibilities so they can focus more on providing quality care to patients. In some cases, a scribe can act as more than just a data collector, and can help with other things like operations, quality control, and maybe even pre-testing. Some ODs see the additional benefits of taking less work home with them and the ability to see more patients in day.