Patient education is an important aspect of eyecare. It allows patients to be well-informed about their own health, ask the appropriate questions, and ultimately receive proper care from their eye doctor. The eyecare industry is changing largely due to our aging population, and learning how to educate this cohort on their eye health will prove to be a huge responsibility for eyecare practices.
Due to the aging baby boomer generation, practices are prioritizing showing senior patients how to prevent or recognize signs of retinal detachment, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and cataracts. Stocking specific products, providing necessary disease screenings, tweaking your communication style, and making your office wheelchair-accessible are just the beginning. You can also use tools to improve your patient education, website accessibility, and create a senior-friendly experience from appointment request to checkout.
Expanding Care for Senior Patients in Your Eyecare Practice
Address your patient education
A big portion of providing the best care for aging eyes is health literacy, ADA accessibility of your practice, and providing patients clear explanation of their options. Patient education materials assist you in expanding how your practice supports the older patient generation.
Start with videos
Creating your own videos on the various diseases and precautions associated with aging can be time-consuming or out-of-budget. Uprise EHR & PM includes a library of patient education videos through Rendia. Rendia can introduce you to tools outside the limit of just videos and graphics. With Uprise Pro, you can embed Rendia’s interactive patient education technology at no extra cost. This tool can help your practice communicate complex topics to patients of all health literacy levels.
Discuss future decisions
While you're managing patient expectations, don't forget to account for shifting priorities with age. Guiding your senior patients starts with asking them questions specific to their needs. In this blog, Seniors and Shared Decision Making: Discussing Quality of Life, the team at Rendia unpacks why you should ask these 5 questions before recommending or beginning treatments:
- How does your health affect your day-to-day life?
- When you think about your health, what’s most important to you?
- What are you expecting to gain from this operation?
- What health conditions or treatments worry you most?
- What abilities are so critical to you that you can’t imagine living without them?
Another important component in addressing patient education is improving health literacy. Health literacy impacts your patients’ outcomes and your bottom line. Addressing it can enhance your reputation and generate more referrals for your practice. Through narrated animations and the teach-back technique, you can ensure that your patients are understanding more complex diagnoses and treatment.
Click the link below to read the full 5 Step OD Boot Camp:
