How One ECP Used CLX to Continue
Growth During a Year of Uncertainty
The following case study examines how experienced optometrist, Dr. Amanda Barker, leveraged her contact lens management system to stay connected to her patients remotely.
Meet Dr. Barker
As the owner of Advanced Family Eyecare in Denver, NC, Dr. Barker made the difficult decision to shut down her practice during the early weeks of the pandemic. Since implementing CLX, her practice has captured tens of thousands of dollars in new annual contact lens revenue. However, COVID-19’s effect on her practice showed her a new way that CLX was valuable, helping her team provide critical services to patients, even when they were forced to work from home.
Using CLX from Anywhere
When the world changed suddenly, many eye doctors were unprepared. They didn’t have systems in place to get patients’ the supplies they needed — like contact lenses — when they weren’t physically in the office.
But, Dr. Barker’s practice had CLX installed, so this wasn’t the case. She and her team could access their contact lens database anywhere they had an internet connection — in this case, from the comfort and safety of their own homes:
“One thing that was really great during the crisis was that key people could operate with CLX from virtually everywhere. Everybody has their own virtual login, and they can login to our EMR, so we never really shut down a single day from our perspective for contact lens orders. That was a very valuable tool for us.”
Managing Patient Supplies
Even when she wasn’t seeing patients in the office, Dr. Barker wanted to ensure that her contact lens patients had enough lenses to get through the shutdown
Normally, Dr. Barker provides convenient online ordering options (like the CLX Webstore and Convenient Reordering) to contact lens patients with a current prescription. But the flexibility of CLX helped Dr. Barker accommodate even more patients than usual.
Using CLX Reporting, Dr. Barker was able to create a list of the patients with expiring prescriptions and extend their ability to reorder online:
“We sent a blanket email through CLX. For any patients who were coming to the end of their year supply or due to come in for a new prescription, the system gave them a convenient option to go ahead and order their next 3 months to get them through the COVID lockdown.”
The Importance of Staying Agile in Adverse Circumstances
The tools included in CLX allowed Dr. Barker to provide her patients with convenient access to their contact lenses, which continued to drive substantial revenue to her practice at a time when she needed it the most.
Dr. Barker says that practices can’t afford to wait to put a system like CLX in place:
“I would tell [peers in the vision industry] that any technology that allows you to make changes quickly and work off-site and decreases double entry is valuable. I think being able to have technology that allows us to make changes quickly and continue business is hard to put a price on.”
Reflecting on the Value of CLX When the World Changes
At the end of the day, CLX is a critical tool for Dr. Barker’s practice and countless others across the country. It helps ECPs manage their contact lens business throughout “normal” times, and as Dr. Barker’s experience illustrates, continues to be a dependable, flexible tool even in unimaginable circumstances:
“Having this technology makes perfect sense for any practice regardless of the size. Even if you’re starting out, having a platform that can grow with you and close gaps that you never even have to think about is worth considering.”