At VisionWeb, we are all about helping your eyecare practice succeed by providing solutions to optical practice efficiency. Now, here’s a scary thought: you might actually be destroying your practice's efficiency through your day-to-day process without even realizing it! If you are guilty of the following, stop what you’re doing and follow the suggested solutions.

How to Fail at Optical Practice Efficiency

1. Use a fax machine to place ophthalmic product orders

It’s 2013! Wake up and smell the internet! Gone are the days of that obnoxious dial-up tone, paper jams, and illegible handwriting. If you are still using a fax machine to place orders, getting a call or two from your labs for clarification is nothing unusual. Spending a couple of minutes on the phone isn't too bad. But you know it's bad when you receive a wrong order and end up with an unhappy customer because your lab tried to decipher your “scriptures.” Wait, there’s more… 

2. Phone optical labs to track orders

Your lab is still trying to decipher what you’ve written on your fax. They correct your order after several phone calls but your order is delayed. Your customers get impatient and start calling to find out why their orders are taking so long, and when they will be completed. There’s nothing much you can do, so you put them on hold while you call the lab again to track the status of their orders.

Before you know it, you’ve wasted 34 hours a year on the phone and fax!

“What can I do?!”

If all that sounds familiar, it's time for a change! There is a better way to manage orders! Online product ordering will relieve these inefficiencies, so back away from the fax machine and put down the phone. Here are a couple of facts to help convince you to get started.

• 93% of practices say that online ordering services make their practice more efficient.
• According to VisionWeb users, orders are returned a full 1-2 days faster than orders placed via phone or fax.

Submitting your orders online allows them to go directly to the lab’s system for processing, jumping ahead of all the orders placed by phone and fax. And quicker turnaround time means happier customers!

Online ordering also means that you track the status of your orders anytime of the day, and no more playing phone tag with labs. When patients call to check on their orders, don’t put them on hold! Log on and give them updates instantly.

3. File claims through multiple sites

If you find yourself going to individual insurance payers’ sites to submit claims, you are probably our prolific web surfer. Don’t mistake that for a cool job, you’re actually stuck using an inconvenient, outdated method for claim filing. Surfing multiple sites means exposing your practice to claim rejections.

4. File paper EOBs

“I keep all EOBs on file, so there’s no point in using electronic remittance advice right?” Wrong! Providers were responsible for keeping a 7 year archive of EOBs, so it might scare you to change your routine. But managing stacks of paper EOBs can be a hassle and you risk the chance of misplacing them. Not to mention the frustration of bumping your knee on that filing cabinet for the fourth time today.

“What can I do?!”

Claims processing is a huge part of your business and obviously you want your claim filing processes to run efficiently to get paid! A clearinghouse can bring every aspect of insurance processes in one location, including filing claims and providing information electronically with electronic remittance advice (ERA).

Claims processing services, like VisionWeb, conveniently submits your claims from one website, so you can forget about leaving multiple tabs open while you work. You also get detailed reporting on claims such as rejections and how to avoid them.

Clearinghouses provide the same information that paper EOB's have, and will keep the information for you for 7 years. If you leave the clearinghouse, it will still be available through your payer. And if you’re really worried about it, you could still print them out and keep copies. But we think you should give your office a makeover and gain extra space without all those metal filing cabinets covering the office! 

Is your practice guilty of any of these inefficiencies? Now that you have the solutions, start making changes today! Do you have other optical practice efficiency fails to add to the list? Feel free to include them in the comments.

We’ve also designed a claim filing efficiency and ordering efficiency test to spot more inefficiencies that may lurk in your practice. See how your current claim filing and ordering methodologies compare.