Online product ordering and claim filing efficiency is important to any practice. After all, it does have a direct impact on the amount of time your staff spends with patients. The more efficient you are, the bigger your bottom line can be. With that said, even the most efficient practice management solutions for eye care practices processes can be destroyed by 3 types of people who are the kryptonite to efficient processes.
Let us introduce you to the 3 people who destroy eyecare practice efficiency and show you how to get them on board with efficiency.
How to Handle Inefficient Team Members
1. The ‘Grandpa’
We get it, people don’t like change. The ‘Grandpa’ type is one of those people that will tell you “Well the phone is the way I’ve done my lab ordering for spectacle lenses, frames, and contacts for years and that’s the way it works best.” This statement, however passionate ‘grandpa’ is about it, is false. Practices that use online ophthalmic product ordering services, such as VisionWeb, get their orders back faster and without errors. When ‘Grandpa’ uses the phone to place his order, it’s much more likely that the laboratory can mishear what ‘Grandpa’ said or they hear what he said correctly and accidently punch it into the system wrong. Online ordering insures that your order goes directly into the Lab Management System without errors. In fact, it’s impossible to place an order that can’t be made thanks to VisionWeb’s error-checking technology. You’ll know if the order is inaccurate before you submit it.
What to do about ‘Grandpa’: Obviously, grandpa might be a little behind the learning curve. The best thing to do is to show them how easy it really is to place an order either through an optometric practice management software integrated with VisionWeb or directly through the VisionWeb portal.
2. The ‘Web Surfer’
Most practices have someone specific who handles their claims processing. Those that hire a biller in-house should make sure that their biller isn’t a ‘Web Surfer’. What this means is that they go to every individual insurance payer’s website to submit claims. While being a surfer seems cool, they are really wasting a lot of time and making the electronic claims submission process inefficient. In other words, just because your claim uploading is done online that doesn’t mean you are doing it efficiently.
What to do about the ‘Web Surfer’: Use a clearinghouse service that consolidates all of your insurance payer’s into one website. If you want to take it a step further, hire a billing team, like VisionWeb's Revenue Cycle Management Services, to handle your claims from start to finish and provide you detailed reporting and analytics. That means that the biller, and practice owner, will know where they are losing money on claims and the best way to recoup those losses.
3. The ‘Debbie Downer’
Debbie Downer is someone who is probably just bored with work, and their boredom can spread to the rest of the office and simply suck the happiness out of the whole office. Unlike our other character, ‘Debbie Downer’ knows he/she is not being challenged at work and is annoyed with the feeling of uselessness. This character is a go-getter that can be a HUGE asset to your eyecare practice in both customer service and efficiency, but if you’re not motivating him/her with new projects, tasks, and programs, he/she will end up being the pessimist of the office.
What do about the ‘Debbie Downer’: Everyone wants to have a little fun while they are on the job. Give the ‘Debbie Downer’ a new responsibility that they can get excited about. Switching to online ordering and transforming claim processes can be a game changer for the not-so-fax-friendly ‘Debbie Downer.’
Keep your staff motivated and focus on their job satisfaction. Here's an ebook on Expert Staff Management that can help you.
Originally published in March 2012. Updated in June 2022.