Leaders will discuss business of ophthalmology during SightLine at ASCRS
Key takeaways:
- The inaugural SightLine meeting will be held April 24.
- Surgeons, practice administrators, industry leaders and payers will discuss key issues.
Things will be a little different ahead of this year’s American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting in Los Angeles as ASCRS debuts SightLine, a new single-day meeting.
The April 24 meeting will bring surgeons together with practice administrators, industry representatives and payers to discuss the commercial aspects of ophthalmology. Steve Speares, ASCRS executive director, told Healio there has always been a push and pull between these parties, and ASCRS wants to get everyone talking.
“ASCRS is a well-positioned organization that can bring all these stakeholders together to have a candid and authentic conversation,” he said. “Everybody has their fundamental interests, but what can we do by sitting down and discussing these to ensure that we understand when there are opposing interests? By understanding each other better, how can we better deliver care?”
The theme of the inaugural SightLine meeting is “exploring payment pathways beyond coverage,” covering topics such as diagnostic services and building new payment categories. Speares said he hopes the meeting can provide insight into how ophthalmologists can reimagine their idea of coverage and reimbursement.
“What we enjoy in ophthalmology is a very unique thing in U.S. medicine in that we have the capability for the dual aspect ruling to enable practices to provide patients these additional uncovered benefits that give them a more satisfactory outcome,” he said. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we carry that theme forward?’”
Speares said the meeting is also focused on categories in which ophthalmologists could look for new opportunities, including what he called the “impending myopia emergency.”
“Is myopia management the business of ophthalmology, or is it the business of optometry?” Speares asked. “In having that discussion, let’s get various stakeholders at the table and talk about where is the financial viability of an ophthalmology practice as it ventures into maybe historically purely optometric waters.”
Speares hopes that all SightLine attendees take away a better understanding of each other and the challenges their colleagues face.
“We want to try to galvanize key leaders in our ecosystem, the ophthalmic space, to really think more about how we work together regarding the challenging issues that are ahead of us,” he said. “It’s been a really tumultuous year already in terms of predicting where things are going and how they will evolve. I think that ASCRS is uniquely situated to really facilitate those conversations.”
Collapse
Healio Interviews
Read more from American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery Meeting
View all
Read more about