optoblog.com

I’ve got tons of these, and I’m going to continue posting them no matter what you say. Or…what you don’t say, I guess, since no one seems to comment whether or not they think the new Optoblog cartoons are funny. Sure, the art isn’t there yet, but you gotta admit the lines are semi-funny, right?

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Did you all notice that the background is a nice sea-foam green?

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Rob Lynch, President and CEO of VSP, started a blog the other day. (Hat tip to Contact Lens Today e-mail newsletter: how come you don’t make an RSS feed?)

But Mr. Lynch does have a site feed, and He states,

I’m excited to launch our VSP blog and have even more direct two-way conversations with our members, clients, doctors…

I hope he’s prepared for the backlash that’s about to hit him. I mean, has he even read the stuff at ODwire.com? Seriously, I’ve heard people say his company is responsible for the mess that the profession of optometry is in today.

I say that VSP is probably a positive force in private practice optometry. They effectively ensure that their beneficiaries can’t go to the big box optical (although there is an out-of-network reimbursement loophole). I like how their beneficiaries do a search for their nearest VSP network doctor by entering their zip code on the VSP website. I also think they reimburse for exams a lot better than most vision plans, and that’s why I like VSP.

The second they lower my reimbursement is the second they get on my poop list, though.

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What do you think of this?

I think it’s awesome. I’d heard it was coming when I heard Melton and Thomas at the AAO meeting in Denver December 2006. Most people’s co-pay is more than that for a one month supply, and this $20 two-pack is now on the shelf at Sam’s Club in Logan, Utah.

Now maybe people will actually get the medication I recommend.

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I worked on my “craft” today. I’m going draw all men and women patients as stick figures with tumbling E hands. Don’t ask me why the doctor is an elephant. I figured there were plenty of cats, dogs, and even chickens, but not enough elephants in cartoons.

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Introducing the optoblog comic strip. These cartoons are in their infantsee infancy. I need to get something other than a mouse to draw with.

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I just found out about EyeCodeRight, a web-based practice management software and electronic health record solution. This looks cool for many reasons, but I’m most excited about the optometrist’s hardware savings. If all you need is a web browser, then think how much you could save!

I currently have officemate, but I had to buy a $2500 server with Windows 2003 server, and I bought Dell computers with Windows XP. If I would have gone with ECR4.0, then I wouldn’t have had to buy an expensive server, and I could assemble my own inexpensive desktops with a free Linux OS and use FireFox web browser to use the eyecoderight service. Nice.

I didn’t see anything about equipment integration, but I notice you can upload photos and stuff, so that might be sufficient for most people.

I also read in their online brochure how patients can enter their demographic info online! Integration with your practice website is pretty sweet.

If anyone is using this, how do you like it vs. other PMS/EHRs that you have used?

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I originally wrote my lamentation on how few optometrist bloggers are out there are back in November 2006. I’ve since been made aware that there are a few more that I didn’t know about.
For example, there is a community of bloggers at eyecoderight.com. (You can subscribe to all of them with this feed.)

There is also Dr. Richard Hom’s blog.

I also heard about the Optcom list. Monty Vickers says,

Are you on the Optcom list? No. I prefer my whine with cheese.

In fairness, it seems all optometrist web boards turn into griping sessions about the profession. Again, my big beef with web boards is that they are not completely open for everyone to read. They are great if you need a specific question answered, but I would rather read commentary from blogs.

See my Bloglines feed subscriptions under the section of “Optometrist Feeds” for more optometry-related sites that I track.

Now, how many eye-related podcasts are out there? I’m talking about ones directed toward other optometrists/ophthalmologists, not patients.

• As Seen From Here
• eyecoderight

Any others that you listen to? (Leave a comment for everyone to see.)

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I saw this ad in the paper, and I thought maybe the world was coming to an end.

I’m sure he is conveniently located near the ShopKo pharmacy. 😉

Even if this isn’t one of the signs of the apocalypse, it certainly can’t be a good sign for private practice doctors (physicians, dentists, optometrists, etc) in general. It looks like we are all going the way of the pharmacist.

Update: Just a little Google search found a news release revealing this type of arrangement has been in the works since May 2006. It also says he can spiffily zoom the Rx’s electronically to the pharmacy.

How soon until Wal-Mart follows suite?

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Note: This is a little essay that I wrote for a competition. I didn’t win, probably because it was more of a rant than an actual essay. So, here it is. Take it for what it’s worth.

I am an optometric physician. I began blogging when my friend, Josh Bancroft of tinyscreenfuls.com, introduced me to it in October of 2004. I soon caught the vision of RSS and blogs, and finally started my own at optoblog.com. I had intended it to be the start of something: optometrists blogging about all things eye doctor and also giving feedback to the ophthalmic product industry. Unfortunately, no one else bothered to join the conversation (at least publicly, but more about that later). Why are there not more optometrists, or for that matter other medical professionals, blogging?

The ophthalmic industry knows about blogging and even podcasting. Acuvue contact lenses had a miserable but thankfully short-lived podcast aimed at teenage girl consumers. Dryeyeblog.com is written by a doctor of one ophthalmic drug company who refutes the research of another ophthalmic drug company. But most blogs are short lived, or at least infrequently updated like Practicemanagementblog.com and Optometric Office Design News. It seems that organizations in the industry heard something along the lines of Scoble’s book which preaches blogging will make your business grow drastically, they tried it out for a while, it probably didn’t bring in the big returns, and so they abandoned their blog.

It could be their fault, but then again, are there any eye doctors out there listening? Optometrists are traditionally slow adopters when it comes to technology. Apparently the people at Standard Optical haven’t even heard of a remarkable device called a door for their exam room (they use curtains). Have you ever been to some optical shop, and the equipment looked like it was older than your parents? It probably was. Now try to get these doctors to pay attention to what is being said on the internet.

But there are some optometrists that are net savvy, but what are they doing? They finally caught on to bulletin boards. The biggest one I know of is ODwire; however, membership is exclusive. They don’t want their conversations to be seen by the general public. They think it’s a secret that doctors actually want to make money, so they don’t share with the world their suggestions with each other on how to grow their business. They complain about ophthalmic product companies, but can ophthalmic product companies join the private board? I think so, but I don’t know of more than one. I think the secrecy and exclusive membership choke the conversation.

The only other optometrist that I know of who blogs faithfully doesn’t even blog about optometry. She blogs about knitting and has 120 Bloglines subscribers! There are a couple optometry school student (oppie) bloggers. The new oppies are more with it in terms of blogging, but they could do so much more. During the 4th year while out on preceptorship, there is a required 4 week correspondence class. The teacher actually uses the internet to bring together students from all over the country and give one online clinical case presentation each; but what about blogging? Imagine if the only requirement of the class was that you maintain a year round blog about interesting cases you see. Instead of enlightening a small group with just one case report, you could discuss multiple cases with the entire class! Imagine school sanctioned blogging! Think of all the information we could learn.

But that’s another problem. Everyone is afraid of lawsuits. What if the information we share with each other gets us in trouble? I think that’s why more medical professionals don’t blog. They don’t want to be accused of dispensing medical advice to someone for whom it wasn’t intended. Imagine a doctor distilling the virtues of anti-oxidant vitamins, so a person happens upon the blog entry and decides to take them…particularly vitamin A…in megadoses…and dies because the person smokes like a chimney.

In treating a patient, we doctors like to get paid so we can pay for malpractice insurance premiums which covers the risk of treating patients. We don’t get paid for blogging. The last thing we need is the family of some chain-smoking gramma from a different state to sue us out of business.

Aside from medical-condition-related content, what about conversing regarding the ophthalmic product industry? If more optometrists would blog about vendors publically, then maybe the corporations would know how to make their product better. I’ve written reviews of certain products marketed towards eye doctors, like electronic health record (EHR) and practice management (PIM) software, and a VIP from the company responded to my blog entry. These vendors must be surfing around looking for comments about them because I didn’t contact most of them. I am terribly dismayed by PIM/EHR shortcomings and the lack of features that I desire, but at least they have an ear out. But what annoys me about the vendors is most would choose to respond to me offline, well…e-mail. So instead of everyone seeing their counterpoints, only I could read it.

I wish the ophthalmic vendors themselves would start blogs. I would like to read about what they are working on next instead of waiting for a convention or a biased review in an industry rag. I would like to hear from the horse’s mouth why I should use their current products, and it would be nice to know who these people are in the first place. Industry rags have a virtual monopoly on ophthalmic product information dissemination. Blogs could shift the balance of power, but only if optometrists ever get savvy enough to figure out how to use a feed aggregator.

But even if the vendors did start blogging, I worry it would be short lived or just considered a cool new way to advertise. A blog should be viewed like having a telephone: just one more needed way to communicate with people. It’s not the savior, be all and end all of a marketing plan. It is one more useful tool of communication.

So why do I blog? I admit that I haven’t been blogging a lot on my optoblog.com website. I have shifted most of my blogging to my practice website with an audience of potential and current patients. My blog intended for other optometrists and vendors has petered out because, quite frankly, I don’t think anyone is listening. If an eye doctor is walking alone in a forest and stubs his toe, does he cuss up a blue streak? Maybe, but if no one is paying attention, then why make a big fuss? When an audience isn’t there, it takes a lot of internal motivation to keep blogging. I don’t do it for therapy. I was hoping to be part of a conversation, but the problem is all the conversations seem to be behind closed doors (or bulletin boards).

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