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Surgeon: Work 'smarter, not harder' when introducing presbyopic IOLs into practice
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NEW YORK — Surgeons should take a business-minded approach when they begin to incorporate presbyopic IOLs into their practice, according to a surgeon speaking here.
"If we're going to commit to having presbyopic IOLs as part of our practice, we have to look not only on the clinical side, but perhaps consider re-evaluating the way we see things from a business standpoint," said Kerry D. Solomon, MD, in a presentation at the OSN New York Symposium.
According to Dr. Solomon, the timing is right for presbyopic IOLs because the increasing population of baby boomers represents a growing number of patients who are developing presbyopia and cataracts. These patients also have disposable income to spend on these lens technologies, he said.
"In general, cataract surgery is going to be more prevalent by 2010. We will all see an increased demand for our services," he said.
The cost of doing business will also increase, he noted. The need to adopt electronic medical records and the government's "pay for performance" policies will all increase overhead costs.
"We can try to increase revenue by working harder and seeing 10% to 15% more patients, or we can work smarter instead," Dr. Solomon said.
Instead of increasing patient volume, Dr. Solomon suggested increasing one's volume of presbyopic lens implantations, which offer the possibility of more remuneration to the surgeon than standard IOLs through patient-share billing. This may mean seeing fewer patients, educating staff to work toward that goal and spending more time with individual patients.
The risk of not getting involved in the trend toward presbyopic IOLs can be devastating, he added.
"It might be loss of revenue, but you might also lose patients who go elsewhere, similarly to how they did with LASIK," Dr. Solomon said.