Six Things You Need to Know Before Starting Your Own Optometry Practice

Are you a graduate from the optometry school? Are you thinking about starting your own optometry practice? Then you’re reading the right post.

A lot of new graduates are faced with challenges when trying to start their optometry service. From putting the resources together to adapting to the ever-changing healthcare system, it can be frustrating at times.

Starting an optometry service is one that requires rolling up your sleeves to meet the professional guidelines set as well as the financial challenges. However, you shouldn’t give up on your dream to open your own optometry service. Here you’ll learn important things you need to know before starting your own practice. Read on and learn more.

1.  Business Knowledge

Well, you might be wondering as to how much business knowledge you should have before starting an optometry practice. To start with, you’ll at least need to be aware of the most basic principle – the expenses should not exceed the money coming in. Well, this might sound simple but many practice owners fall victim to this problem.

While you can start your optometry service without any business knowledge, you’ll be required to seek business mentorship to succeed. Learning from other people in the business and knowing where to seek help is the key to success.

To that end, lack of business knowledge should not deter you from owning your optometry service if you’re experienced. You can always learn business knowledge overtime. Some resources such as online courses, local community colleges, and experts in your filed are excellent places to gain business knowledge.

2. Choosing Location

Just like any other business, you need to choose the right location for your optometry practice. An area with limited access to other optometry services can be the right place to start. Also, you can start your optometry practice in any area and create your demand. You can do this by:

•         Offering vision therapy in institutions such as schools
•         Helping retirement community manage ocular disease
•         Offering primary care in a college town

As a thumb of rule, choose a location with a saturated market or one with growth potential.

3. Billing and Coding

It’s not easy to become an expert in optometry billing and coding. Apart from knowing how routine and medical plans are different, you’ll also need to know how deductibles will affect the fees, and what copays will be deductible to visits.

Even after attending optometry school, you might not get sufficient knowledge on this. You’ll, therefore, need to check the optometry coding cheat sheet guide immediately after graduation so you can learn more about this topic.

4. Buying Equipment

You want to start a modern optometry practice and provide the best service, right? Then you need to consider the latest technological advancements before buying your equipment. Remember no matter the size of your practice, in the end, it all comes down to the doctor’s experience and equipment they’re using.

Some of the essential equipment you’ll need to buy include the digital VA system, tonometer, OCT imaging equipment, fundus photography equipment, autorefractors, etc.  

These are just some essential equipment you’ll need when starting your optometry practice. You can always add more equipment as your practice grows. Remember buying equipment is more than capital investment as it provides a better way to serve customers.

5. Hiring and Training Employees

Would you rather hire a skilled person without a good attitude or a person with a good attitude but with no experience and then train them? Well, the answer depends on how you view this.

If you hire employees without experience, you’ll have to make time to train them on how to handle the various tasks within your practice. Some of these employees might, in fact, turn out to be the best in your practice.

6. Marketing

Getting heavily involved in local activities is an excellent way to market your practice. Where possible, shop locally and carry business cards with you. Apart from using the traditional ways of marketing, be sure to optimize your website for local searches. There are many ways to achieve this, including:

Creating social media profiles, for instance, Facebook and Google+, adding pictures to them as well as addresses, telephone numbers, and other contact information. You can also include other relevant information concerning your practice as well as general eye care tips.

Ensure that the name of your practice, address, and contact information are accurately listed on all online directories, including:

•         Yahoo
•         Bing
•         Yelp
•         Google
•         Angie’s List

Make sure that the content on your website meets the needs of your targeted audience. Using geo modifiers and targeted keywords on your website is an excellent way to achieve this.