Whether you’re at Vision Expo East or your planning for a spring break vacation, taking a few days away from your optometric practice can become an overwhelming challenge, especially if you’re in a single OD practice. In addition to planning your itinerary and packing, you also have to decide what is going to happen to your practice while you’re away. Below are a few options for handling your staff while you’re away from your optometric practice.

3 Options For Managing Your Optometric Practice While On Vacation

Close The Practice

With some strategic planning, you can block off your availability on your calendar to keep patients and your office staff from scheduling appointments on the days that you’d like to be out. By closing the office, you can focus on enjoying the vacation, or tradeshow and not have to worry about what’s going on in your office.

However, if you close your practice, it means that if a patient really needs to get a hold of an eye care professional, there is a chance that they will go to a competitor and switch their eye care provider.

Keep Your Staff Busy

If you’re only going to be gone a few days, or you think closing the practice will damage the relationships you’ve built with your staff and community, then you can keep your office open. As an optometry practice gets busier, small admin tasks have to be shelved to better assist patients in the practice.

Work with your office manager to create a list of things your staff can do while you’re away. Some activities can include:

• Deep clean the practice
• Call patients who haven’t returned to your practice or responded to recall emails
• Record inventory of frames and contacts
• Host a trunk show
• Take online learning courses
• Schedule rep visits
• Update training documents

Keeping your practice open will also let your staff take care of the patients scheduling appointments and picking up frames from your optical shop.

Find A Fill-in

Another option you have for keeping your practice open while you’re out of town is to hire a fill-in doctor so you can keep a full schedule of patients coming to your optometric practice. Finding a fill-in OD might seem like a lot of work, but it can be easy if you know where to look. Look to social media groups, online communities, optometry schools, and state boards to list your request for a fill-in doc.

Subscribe to the blog for more optometric practice management tips.