The importance of using education to promote your eye care practice

You've put time, effort, and money into building a solid eye care practice. No matter where you are in your career, you want to provide your patients with full-scope, quality care. 

Building and maintaining a successful eye care practice can be done without starting from scratch or designing a complex structure. It requires educating patients on eye health issues and explaining your expertise and solutions in ways that make them feel confident in the answer and you as their eye care practitioner. Small steps in creating a culture of eye care can permeate from one-on-one relationships with patients to the outward-facing personality of the practice.

Promoting your expertise in eye care

In a past HOYA blog, 4 Strengths Every ECP Needs to Leverage, we covered a breakdown of the four main pillars you should focus on and expand upon to create a successful and trusted eye care practice. 

The four pillars we covered were:

1. Expertise in eye care
2. Technology agility
3. Patient trust and relationships
4. Personality and brand

Setting yourself apart by focusing on the pillars above enables your practice to shine above the competition, your patients feel the authenticity of your brand, and your expertise brings in the best patients through your doors that need the services you provide. 

At HOYA, we judge our own success by the success of our partner practices. We want to make it easy for you to focus on what drew you into optometry in the first place: vision care and helping patients. The more time you spend educating your patients, the more successful you can grow your practice and the more successful we can be in creating innovative new lens designs that can set your practice apart from the rest.

We are constantly creating new products and are committed to being your ally in helping your practice flourish. 

Your dedication to providing the highest quality care to your patients has inspired us to create a new patient-facing infographic that educates on important eye care issues and sets up your practice as their guide to the solution.

What it takes to build a successful eye care practice

Patient education is an essential aspect of your eye care practice. It allows patients to stay informed about their eye health, possible eye disease conditions or disorders, and encourages them to actively participate in proper eye care management with you, their eye doctor.

Below, we've expanded on the topics covered in our new patient-facing infographic to empower your practice to:

• Educate patients on great vision solutions
• Stay on top of the latest and greatest lens technology
• Build and maintain patient trust and relationships

Use the sections below to explain further solutions to patients with questions, promote products and create awareness on social media, and add to your website as blogs or service offerings.

Provide single vision patients with 360° of visual comfort

Your single vision patients want one simple thing — to see better than ever without discomfort or being stuck with a limited frame selection. As an eye-care practice owner, you want to meet those expectations. The problem with most single vision lenses is that the technology used to create them is severely outdated. 

To learn more about the benefits of free form lenses, check out our blog Free Form Lenses Aren’t Just for Progressive Lenses Anymore.

Single vision free form lenses offer eyeglass consumers an improved degree of sharpness and field of view that surpasses conventional finished and traditionally surfaced lenses. Our advanced free form single vision designs deliver a clear and comfortable vision.

Your patients are looking for lenses with technology that complements their daily visual demands. Offering your patients MySV™ provides an individual-focused single vision lens with the power of 360° Visual Comfort™. Comfort, confidence, and peripheral vision all in one lens.

Give your customers comfortable vision without compromising comfort, contrast, or color perception.

Your patients need light reactive lens options that perform well in all temperature and UV conditions, with opportunities to meet multiple lifestyle needs. When educating patients about the benefits of photochromic lens technology , it is important to focus on how photochromic lenses provide multiple benefits in one pair of glasses.The Sensity® family of light reactive lenses provide a range of solutions for visual comfort and UV protection that is right for every patient.

• Consistent performance in different climates and light conditions, thanks to Stabilight Technology®**
• Outstanding contrast and glare reduction with Sensity® deep, natural colors
• Stand out with quality and comfort 
• Reduced glare when activated
• 100% protection against UV rays 
• Blue light protection indoors and outdoors***

As you discuss light reactive lenses with your patients, you will likely learn three things:

1. Many have had a poor experience with light-reactive lenses 
2. 7 in 10 people claim issues with light sensitivity 
3. Many have never even tried them at all

Use these opportunities to offer a solution to all of the above. With HOYA's new Sensity® 2 light reactive lenses, you can expect a fadeback 47% faster than the original Sensity® lenses.

*Sensity® Fast does not contain Stabilight Technology®

**Based on internal and external photochromic activation and deactivation measurements taken at different temperature levels.

 **Based on internal testing of average light transmission between 381nm-500nm compared to a standard clear lens.

Promoting eye safety at the workplace

It's always a good time to promote eye health and safety at your practice.

We encourage ECPs to start health-related conversations with a questionnaire or ask questions upfront. The first thing many patients think of when they hear "workplace eye injuries" is something drastic going wrong on a construction site, or a chemical splash that requires an emergency eyewash station. 

While such accidents happen, the day-to-day effects on our visual system from screens, UV rays, and blue light all take their toll in the workplace. Ask your patients how often they use a screen and if they work inside or outside. Finding out more about your patients' work life will help you better understand their needs while providing an avenue to discuss solutions.

Send your patient away with solutions and eye advice for protecting their eye health at work, such as:

• Individualized indoor lenses
• Photochromic lenses
• Polarized lenses
• Premium computer lenses
• Anti-reflective lens coating

Protect your patients' eyes with polarized sunglasses

Many people think of sunglasses as primarily a summer accessory. We may have more need for them during the sunny seasons as we spend a lot more time outdoors, but polarized lenses are just as important in winter.

When sunlight reflects off a surface, it causes glare and reflections, causing glare and reflections. Without the proper protection, this can damage our eyes

Without polarization, sunglasses lack the ability to adequately address glare and reflections. Non Polarized sunglasses treat all sunlight equally and offer a basic level of protection.

Polarized sunglasses actively and directly address the problem of glare and focused reflections. How do polarized sunglasses work? It comes down to chemical and mechanical magic engineering that minimizes bright reflections. This creates a more uniformly illuminated view.

Non-polarized sunglasses offer some protection yet fail to address the glare factor that can lead to dangerous driving situations, eye strain on a bright day, and the sun reflecting off snow or water. Wearing polarized sunglasses will keep your patients safer all year round.

Preparing for the back-to-school season

Start educating patients about how uncorrected vision disorders can make learning more difficult. Due to so much information being presented visually to children, any problem that interferes with getting this visual information efficiently to the brain can make learning more difficult. 

Remind your patients, especially those with children who have recently returned to school, about the importance of vision care to prevent digital eye strain (DES.) Also, inform them that their vision plan makes premium products that help treat DES more affordable. They and their children deserve to protect the future of their eye health, and once they make their appointment, make sure to treat all of their DES symptoms. 

Parents need to know the early signs of vision trouble in their children, and we're here to support you and your team through it — with our back-to-school white paper.

We want your practice to thrive

Working together, we can accomplish almost anything. You bring the expertise and educate your patients on what solution is best for their vision and lifestyle while HOYA stays committed to being your ally and provides the newest innovative technology that differentiates your practice and wows your patients.

Only by bringing our skills together can we form a harmonious partnership that elevates results for us both. At HOYA, we want our ECPs to feel connected and grow their practice in ways they never realized were possible.

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