Eyeworld Daily News

EW SHOW DAILY 56 Monday, May 9, 2016 by Ellen Stodola EyeWorld Senior Staff Writer online appointments, evening or even Saturday availability, and min- imal postop visits are helpful. "We cut our routine postop regimen to 1 day and 1 month," Dr. Dell said. The thing about these millen- nials is that they're fundamentally different, he said. They've grown up with the message: "You're an amazing person and you deserve the best." Forget traditional media, Dr. Dell said. He added it may be im- portant to engage with social media, forget slick videos in favor of raw or amateur-type videos, and consider a "social benefit" promotion. "But you can't live by these millennials alone," Dr. Dell said. LASIK volumes are still somewhat depressed, he said. It's important to try to reach out to senior candi- dates, who he said are different from many senior candidates in the past because they tend to be much more active. EW Editors' note: This event was support- ed by educational grants from Abbott Medical Optics (Abbott Park, Illinois) and Alcon (Fort Worth, Texas). Meanwhile, Dr. Dell discussed millennials and baby boomers. It's important, he said, to determine who your target audience should be, what medium is best to reach them, and choosing an overall look and feel of the patient experience. Appealing to 1 target audience may be a "difficult task," according to Dr. Dell, because of the need to appeal to very different age groups, specifically those around 25 years old and those around 65 years old. These types of patients have differ- ent concepts of luxury, professional competence, authority, and technol- ogy, he said. They also use different methods to communicate. "The millennials are of extreme importance to you if you're interest- ed in laser vision correction because they outnumber the boomers by 11 million people," Dr. Dell said. Millennials demand transparency, he said. "So when you talk to these patients, don't minimize risks." The patient will likely be doing online research as well. Dr. Dell also stressed not to make the millennial patient wait. Tools to speed up the process like their surgery. All it takes is a very small number of unhappy patients, he said. Minimizing dissatisfaction after surgery, from a clinical aspect, is very important for both the phy- sician and patient but also for the larger market. Dr. Schallhorn said years ago, 20/40 was the benchmark, but now it seems to have shifted to 20/20. Patient referrals are a corner- stone to our practice, he said, so it's important to try to drive more referrals. Dr. Schallhorn shared information on results from patients who will refer others. If you achieve 20/20 or better, a patient is more likely to refer, he said. Uncorrected vision is the most important clinical factor driving both patient satisfaction and referral rates, Dr. Schallhorn said. Addition- ally, postoperative astigmatism is ex- ponentially related to dissatisfaction. "With the latest generation LASIK, we're achieving unprecedent- ed results," Dr. Schallhorn said. New technology that provides better and more consistent outcomes will help deliver this life-changing procedure to more patients, he said. T he Sunday morning EyeWorld CME Educational Symposium focused on "Leveraging Your Refractive Practice: Finding Success with Next Generation Diagnostics and Ablation Profiles." The program chairs were Stephen Lane, MD, Stillwater, Minnesota, and Steven Schallhorn, MD, San Diego, with faculty includ- ing Steven Dell, MD, Austin, Texas, A. John Kanellopoulos, MD, Ath- ens, Greece, and Edward Manche, MD, Palo Alto, California. Dr. Schallhorn presented on "How Technology Will Help Reinvig- orate LVC." The outcomes that we have are good, yet there's a stagnant market, he said. There are unprece- dented outcomes compared to even 5–10 years ago, but the market has remained stagnant, he added. So, what role does technology play? And how can we use it to help boost volumes and help more patients? Dr. Schallhorn said that some of the issues with the stagnant market have to do with the small handful of patients who are not happy with Meeting Reporter New refractive technologies discussed in morning event Dr. Schallhorn (left) and Dr. Lane (right) moderate an EyeWorld event on refractive technology.

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