Dear ASCRS Member,
I am excited to tell you about the ASCRS Business of Refractive Cataract Surgery Summit September 27–28 in the Dallas, Texas, metro area. This meeting is designed to provide turnkey, A-Z materials and teachings to grow advanced implant cataract surgery in your practice.
We have had a great response from practices and industry for this first-of-its-kind meeting, designed to provide a roadmap along with the knowledge and materials to help you and your practice grow the most exciting area happening in cataract surgery today: advanced implant cataract surgery.
When we went into medicine to help people, we had no idea what the future had in store for us. We knew we wanted to care for people using the skills we had learned. But we had no idea of the significance and challenge of understanding “the business of medicine.” Many of us had to learn it “on the fly.” For many doctors it is their number one concern: “How do I navigate the business of what I do during unprecedented change?”
Couple our lack of training in business with decreasing reimbursements and increasing costs and you have a recipe for challenges that can negatively impact our practices’ financial health and personal joy in our sacred journey of restoring vision. Over the past decade, cataract surgery reimbursements have continued to go down and down, and all indications are that this reduction will continue.
During this time of reducing insurance coverage, there has been a major increase in our patients’ willingness to pay—to invest their dollars—for their health, including their own advanced implant cataract surgery. For practices comfortable with delivering advanced implant cataract surgery, the patient response has been unprecedented due to the high patient satisfaction these technologies provide along with happy patients referring in other patients.
At the ASCRS Business of Refractive Cataract Surgery Summit, you will learn from practices that have mastered this hybrid reimbursement era that we’re now in, where patients pay out of pocket in addition to their insurance for the technology and results of advanced implant cataract surgery. Successful practices will share what this has done for their practice joy and financial health.
We have also found that a lot of ophthalmology practices are not comfortable with this “patient pay” side of medicine. Ophthalmologists have so much to keep up with simply delivering the baseline medical and surgical services that patients need that it is difficult to put together a comprehensive plan to help a cataract practice grow into the future with opportunities like advanced implants.
The ASCRS Business of Refractive Cataract Surgery Summit brings together doctors and business leaders of practices that are healthy because they have really figured out how to deliver this hybrid “future of the practice of medicine,” consisting of both patient-pay and insurance-based services.
These practices that have mastered the business—and of course the surgery—of advanced implant cataract surgery have put together a course that provides the tips, pearls, and important resources for you to take home and implement immediately in your practice.
ASCRS is responding to the concerns it has heard from its membership and has asked practices that have been able to really grow and implement advanced implants to share their learnings, their processes, and their materials to help practices that want to truly grow in advanced cataract surgery.
The reason this 2-day, highly focused course can be delivered at a much lower cost than it’s valued at is because of the generous support of industry, the sharing of knowledge from successful practices, and the donation of practice development materials such as forms, videos, checklists, and slide presentations from those that have mastered advanced implant cataract surgery.
Attendees will also learn about:
- How to manage change and how patients investing in advanced technologies helps the patient and the practice.
- How to incorporate cash-pay services into an already busy practice, including formulas on how to calculate fair prices to charge and helpful payment plan options.
- Patient education on advanced implants and the necessary and helpful forms describing patient and insurance responsibilities. Patients truly appreciate this.
- How to educate patients so they truly learn the pluses and minuses of traditional and advanced implants technologies and feel like they are empowered to make a balanced, informed decision for themselves.
- Staff education slides and materials on their role in delivering cash-pay advanced implant services.
- How to build and educate a referral network on advanced-technology implant cataract surgery (including the slides, newsletter templates, and ongoing referring education).
- Compliance details.
- Marketing advanced implant cataract surgery both internally and externally.
- Telecommunication skills and tips for every step of the advanced implant journey along with designing your practice roadmap for success.
- Forms and checklists to facilitate the journey for the surgeon, staff, and patient.
- How to grow your team culture and patient experience in a way that optimizes the success of your practice and differentiates you in your community and region.
- Ongoing resources and support.
- And much more …
Because this is a lot to absorb and incorporate, we recognize that doctors are busy, and we are asking them to bring a lead person from their practice to help implement these learnings. This “implementor” should be the person who will help facilitate these learnings and materials in your practice and also participate in post-course virtual meetings (after the 2-day in-person Summit) to make sure the momentum in your practice continues.
The cost of a practice creating all the materials and teachings of this course would be prohibitive for some practices, but because of industry support and participating practices sharing their resources, we are offering this course at $7,500 per practice (a single tuition covers two attendees).
If you are interested in attending with an implementor from your practice, the dates again are Friday, September 27 and Saturday, September 28. We suggest arrival the evening of Thursday, September 26, and departure the morning of Sunday, September 29.
We are limiting the class size to give truly personalized education and materials to the practices who attend. If it is full when you apply, don’t worry, there will be future meetings.
Sincerely,
Vance Thompson, MD
ASCRS President