You’ve told us that the relationship between you and you patient is important—the trust and comfort you cultivate impacts patient outcomes in ways that can’t be measured. Enabling VSP network practices like yours to supplement the in-person eye care experience with a doctor-remote comprehensive eye exam offering allows for an opportunity to increase patient access and extend the patient-doctor relationship. To support this, VSP has created a Premier Edge Doctor-Remote Offer for doctors interested in implementing doctor-remote eye exams in their practice.
Doctor-remote eye exams create new options for your practice. Many retail locations and private practice owners are using virtual care technology to expand their appointment books, work from home more often or even cut down on commuting to satellite locations. Research shows that consumers are more open to virtual care options, allowing them to connect with their doctor with greater schedule flexibility. This model supports private practices participating in Premier Edge looking to expand access to care and stay competitive by meeting evolving consumer expectations.
To ensure you continue to play a central role in your patients’ eye health—even remotely—doctor-remote eye exams make it easy for you and your patient to connect when in-person care is not possible or convenient for you. VSP refers to these comprehensive exams as a WellVision eExam™.
How does it work? It’s exactly as it sounds. The patient is in the practice assisted by a technician, while you are in a separate remote location (for example, at home or at another practice location). You conduct the exam through real-time two-way communication technology and equipment. It is an extension of your in-office optometric lane—from another location, you interact via a video platform with the patient who is in-practice.
While this technology isn’t a fit for every practice, it has benefited ours tremendously. Not only does it give us access to more patients so we can grow the practice, but it helps us build patient loyalty. Having great baseline readings with the technologies that are required to set up remote visits provides a very thorough understanding of the patient's overall ocular health, which you can track over time. Pairing your expertise with cutting edge technology in this way builds a very loyal patient who will be an established patient for years to come.