With the busy schedule of seeing patients every day in your eyecare practice, it’s easy for the business side of the house to sometimes get put on the back burner, especially if you are the OD and practice owner. The responsibilities that come with owning your own business and making all the decisions can get overwhelming to manage on top of a full patient load.

Making connections and networking with your peers in the industry can give you a channel for sourcing ideas and learning from other ODs who have been experiencing the same things that you might be struggling with. We recently carried out 12 conversations with a handful of ODs discussing a bunch of different practice challenges they have faced in their careers and advice they have for others going through the same situations.

Below is an excerpt of one of the topics covered in the eBook. If you want to learn more from others in the industry, download a full copy of the eBook here.

Dr. John McCormick on Overcoming Challenges in the Eyecare Practice

What challenges make your job as an optometrist harder than it needs to be?

For me personally, it’s always been the insurance side of my business and keeping up with government regulations. The complexities of the insurance industry make it hard to keep up, and in health care heavy government regulations can be intimidating.

What strategies have you implemented to minimize the impact of these challenges?

Finding efficient ways to manage both of these aspects keeps me sane! For my insurance challenges, I’ve outsourced my vision and medical claims and billing to a third-party revenue cycle management service. They file my claims, do the posting when money comes in, resubmit denials, advise me of miscoding and follow up on slow pays.

Even after I’ve gone home for the day, my claims are still being worked on each night. I’ve found that it’s most cost effective for me to outsource the service than have it done by employees in my office. They do a better job, and I don’t have to worry about staff turnover and training if I lose my insurance person.

For all things regulatory: IRS to OSHA, I have hired a financial bookkeeper who is great at keeping my finances straight, money in the bank, bills paid and books up to date. But to keep my day to day moving forward and managing employees I rely on a great general manager—that’s something you really need in-house.

Read more insights and advice like this in the complete eBook, 12 Insider Secrets with America’s Top ODs.