Golden Elevator Nuggets: The AI Shifts Changing How Eye Care Practices Grow, with Daniel Rostenne

Summary

Podcast Summary: Power Hour Optometry
Episode: Golden Elevator Nuggets: The AI Shifts Changing How Eye Care Practices Grow, with Daniel Rostenne
Release Date: March 26, 2025
Host: Eugene Shotsman
Guest: Daniel Rostenne
Sponsor: CareCredit

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Power Hour Optometry, host Eugene Shotsman welcomes back Daniel Rostenne to discuss the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on eye care practices. Building on their previous conversation at Vision Expo West, they delve deeper into technological innovations that are reshaping patient acquisition, engagement, and conversion within the optometric industry.

The Transformation of Information Access and AI's Impact

Eugene kicks off the discussion by highlighting the rapid evolution of technology, particularly AI, and its implications for optometry practices. Daniel emphasizes the profound shift in how consumers interact with information:

Daniel Rostenne (05:00): "AI is changing the way people search. No longer is it optometrist near me... Now people are used to basically going to an AI and talking to it."

He draws parallels to the 2008 emergence of the iPhone paired with Google, which revolutionized information accessibility. Today’s transformation involves interacting directly with AI, expecting instantaneous and tailored responses.

Golden Elevator Nuggets: AI Applications in Optometry

AI's Influence on Patient Search Behavior [05:00 - 09:22]

Daniel explains how AI alters search behaviors, moving from keyword-based queries to conversational prompts directed at AI assistants like ChatGPT. This change necessitates that practices optimize their online presence to remain visible in AI-driven searches.

Daniel Rostenne (07:30): "Now the expectation on the part of the consumer is that I will talk to this thing and it will digest and provide me back with the information that I'm looking for in the way that I want it."

He notes that while traditional search remains significant, AI tools like ChatGPT are rapidly gaining traction, with substantial monthly visits that rival established platforms:

Daniel Rostenne (08:33): "ChatGPT receives 3.8 billion visits compared to Google’s 82 billion."

Enhancing Phone Call Revenue Opportunities [16:00 - 22:54]

Eugene and Daniel discuss the critical role of phone calls in patient acquisition and the potential revenue opportunities they present. Daniel introduces the concept of "farming" calls to maximize bookings:

Daniel Rostenne (18:43): "The technique is called farming. And I would say that the technique is simple enough to explain, although it's complex to execute..."

They highlight that a significant percentage of appointment-related calls go unanswered or fail to convert, representing a substantial missed revenue opportunity. AI-driven call tracking can analyze these interactions, provide actionable insights, and enhance staff performance.

Daniel Rostenne (20:40): "Objectively, clinically, what's possible. The practice has to find that technology and adopt it, because it's just far too valuable to go without it."

AI-enhanced Call Tracking and Capture Rate [17:32 - 22:54]

Daniel elaborates on how AI can assess call quality and conversion rates, offering data-driven feedback to improve staff performance. This continuous improvement mindset can lead to significant revenue increases:

Daniel Rostenne (20:00): "A practice that's averaging 1,000 calls a month could basically make almost a half a million more dollars a year simply by farming..."

Implementing AI solutions for call tracking not only automates the monitoring process but also fosters a culture of constant enhancement within the practice.

AI in Practice Management and Automation [23:33 - 27:00]

The conversation shifts to leveraging AI for automating routine practice management tasks. Daniel introduces "Genie," a custom GPT designed to handle common queries from staff, thereby freeing up time for higher-value activities.

Daniel Rostenne (25:02): "Genie is able to... if Genie doesn't know, then Genie asks the practice manager."

This tool streamlines internal communications and ensures that standard operating procedures are easily accessible, enhancing overall efficiency.

Leveraging Electronic Health Records (EHR) and AI [30:02 - 36:21]

Eugene and Daniel explore the integration of AI with Electronic Health Records (EHR) to optimize marketing strategies and operational efficiency. By harnessing EHR data, practices can:

• Automate Scheduling and Reminders: Utilize EHR data to manage patient appointments and send automatic recalls.

• Track Marketing ROI: Link patient appointments and revenues back to specific marketing efforts to determine the most effective channels.

Daniel Rostenne (33:32): "Multi-location practices can optimize their Google Ads budget based on actual availability within each location."

This integration allows for dynamic adjustment of marketing spend, ensuring that advertising budgets are allocated where they can yield the highest returns.

Optimizing Marketing Strategies with AI and EHR Integration [33:32 - 41:10]

The discussion emphasizes the importance of precise marketing budget allocation informed by data from EHR and AI tools. Daniel advocates for a data-driven approach:

Daniel Rostenne (35:45): "Track which marketing techniques and then invest heavier into the marketing techniques that have the highest ROI."

By understanding the varying patient values and how different marketing channels attract diverse patient segments, practices can tailor their strategies to maximize profitability.

Effective Patient Communication: Text vs Email [41:10 - 45:29]

Eugene and Daniel compare the effectiveness of text messages and emails in patient communication. They highlight the advantages of each medium:

• Text Messages: High open rates and immediate engagement.

  Daniel Rostenne (42:22): "90% of people read their text messages within the first three minutes."

• Emails: Suitable for in-depth information and building trust.

  Daniel Rostenne (43:01): "Email has a higher trust component to it. It furthers a bigger relationship with the patient."

They recommend creating dedicated landing pages for each communication to ensure a seamless and relevant patient experience, thereby increasing the likelihood of appointment bookings.

Daniel Rostenne (44:40): "When the patient clicks... include all the other information that a patient needs in order to make an appointment decision right then and there."

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Eugene wraps up the episode by summarizing the critical insights discussed:

1. Adapt to AI-Driven Search: Optimize your online presence for AI queries to remain visible.
2. Maximize Call Revenue: Implement AI-driven call tracking to improve conversion rates and capture more revenue.
3. Leverage EHR Data: Use EHR-integrated AI tools to refine marketing strategies and allocate budgets effectively.
4. Enhance Patient Communication: Utilize both text and email, complemented by dedicated landing pages, to engage patients effectively.
5. Continuous Improvement: Foster a culture of constant enhancement through data-driven feedback and AI tools.

Daniel underscores the necessity for practices to embrace AI and technological integrations to stay competitive and thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Daniel Rostenne (46:32): "This is such a huge revenue opportunity."

The episode concludes with a brief sponsor message from CareCredit, highlighting their role in providing flexible financing options to support practice growth.

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Notable Quotes

• Daniel Rostenne (05:00): "AI is changing the way people search. No longer is it optometrist near me..."
• Daniel Rostenne (07:30): "Now the expectation on the part of the consumer is that I will talk to this thing and it will digest and provide me back with the information..."
• Daniel Rostenne (18:43): "The technique is called farming..."
• Daniel Rostenne (20:00): "A practice that's averaging 1,000 calls a month could basically make almost a half a million more dollars a year simply by farming..."
• Daniel Rostenne (25:02): "Genie is able to... if Genie doesn't know, then Genie asks the practice manager."
• Daniel Rostenne (42:22): "90% of people read their text messages within the first three minutes."
• Daniel Rostenne (43:01): "Email has a higher trust component to it. It furthers a bigger relationship with the patient."
• Daniel Rostenne (35:45): "Track which marketing techniques and then invest heavier into the marketing techniques that have the highest ROI."
• Daniel Rostenne (46:32): "This is such a huge revenue opportunity."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Power Hour Optometry provides a comprehensive exploration of how AI is revolutionizing the optometric practice landscape. From transforming patient search behaviors to optimizing marketing strategies and enhancing patient communication, the insights shared by Daniel Rostenne offer actionable strategies for practices aiming to leverage technology for growth and efficiency. Embracing these AI-driven innovations is essential for practices looking to stay ahead in a competitive and ever-evolving industry.

Transcript

[Daniel Roston]

Foreign.

[Eugene Shotsman]

Welcome to the Power Hour, Optometry's biggest and longest running show. I'm your host, Eugene Shotsman. And today we're diving into something that is fundamentally reshaping the way practices grow. Technology and AI in patient acquisition, patient engagement and conversion. And to help us navigate the shift, I brought back Daniel Roston. We had previously recorded a show together at Vision Expo west and we got so much positive feedback that I decided to bring him back for another live show at Vision Expo east in 2025. So if you heard the previous episode, we stumbled onto this phrase called golden elevator nuggets. Something between golden nuggets and elevator pitch. But basically these are like bite size, high value insights that you can take back to your practice, implement immediately. And last time we focused primarily on marketing, so today we're talking primarily technology. So here's some examples of topics we cover in the episode Number one, how AI is changing patient search behavior and what practices need to do right now to stay visible from an AI search perspective. We talk about strategies to turn every patient phone call into revenue opportunities. We talk about stopping how how you stop wasting money on Google Ads by dynamically adjusting spend based on actual scheduling data. We talk about mistakes that practices make with online scheduling, with recall and digital patient communication, and how you fix those mistakes. We also talk about how AI can help automate practice management questions, freeing up your staff's time for higher value tasks. And this is just some a sampling of some of the topics we cover.

[Daniel Roston]

The idea is that the episode is.

[Eugene Shotsman]

Packed with short, practical strategies that you can start using today and then you can start optimizing your marketing, optimizing patient communication, maximize every patient opportunity and really future proof your practice maybe in a way in a rapidly changing world that is now dominated by trying to navigate AI effectively. So before I dive in, I want to mention that this episode was recorded in the CareCredit booth. CareCredit is sponsoring the show because they're committed to helping practices grow. And you're going to hear a short testimonial from a practice owner that's using CareCredit to increase her revenue per patient. You're going to hear that somewhere in the middle of the show for about 90 seconds. And I'm actually looking for a lot of feedback on this financing topic. I'm curious whether in today's economic environment we are seeing that financing is helping or financing is not helping. And I'd love to put together a panel for a future show. So this is my little ad right now that if you have a strong opinion on this, please reach out to me directly. And of course, if you have other questions, feedback, or just want another round of golden elevator nuggets in the future, please reach out to me as well. And you can do that [e-mail] or on the Power Hour website. And now let's go to today's show.

[Daniel Roston]

Welcome to the Power Hour. My guest today, Daniel Rosten. And Daniel, you and I recorded an episode at a previous Vision Expo. We came up with a term during that episode of something like golden elevator nuggets. And that term came out of the fact that I always want to give the audiences or audiences always tell me that there's golden nuggets in the show that they can take back. And then I don't remember how the elevator ended up.

Elevator pitch. It's a short version.

Oh yeah, that's right. It's something you could say on an elevator. And it's a short nugget. Yeah. Okay. So we did a lot of golden elevator nuggets last time and then we got a lot of feedback about the fact that people found that valuable. So I was excited to have you back at this next expo. Live at the CareCredit booth, we are recording a show and I think one of the core premises of the show is what is the evolution of technology today in an effort to help drive patient volume, in an effort to help drive and leverage patient transaction size, and in an effort to just help practices improve. So we're talking about, I think last time we talked a lot about various marketing techniques. Today we're going to talk a little bit more about technology. So let's start in the beginning. Obviously there is a prevalent piece of technology that is on everybody's mind today. You know what it is?

AI.

That's right. I hope our viewers sense the sarcasm. For those who can't see Daniel making a face that was in fact sarcastic, I'm pretty sure that you and I are both very deeply steeped into AI on a day to day basis. We've got teams that are using it on a day to day basis. So what are some of the patterns that you're seeing with AI today?

The biggest impact I'm noticing from a marketing perspective and how that can translate into practice growth is that AI is changing the way people search. No longer is it optometrist near me. No longer is it a long tail keyword, which is an optometrist near me that provides dry eye, whatever. Now people are used to basically going to an AI and talking to it. Press that microphone button and either transcribe or talk. Now, a prompt is about 10, 20, 30 seconds. It could be a minute long. So the patient is actually out there requesting a lot of things in their query.

Right. We're talking about Dr. GPT as opposed to optometrists near me now. It's not like search is completely gone, but I do think that. And I'm going to get on a little bit of a soapbox because I've been lecturing a little bit about AI and practical applications of AI. And one of the things that I think people are starting to understand is that the consumer's relationship with information is changing in today's environment. What people? The experience that a patient has with information overall is transitioning. Now, what I mean by that is that this transition happened once before. And it's actually one of the reasons why I got excited and dedicated my career towards marketing consumer behavior, because I got to witness this transition. 2008 ish, when the iPhone came out and then the iPhone being paired with Google. Prior to that, we had a very different relationship with information. Right. Like prior to that, we had to go do research, and then all of a sudden we had the world's information at the tip of our fingers in our pockets. And that was a transformational time, I think, for consumers. That was a transformational time for technologists. It was also a transformational time for anybody who serves consumers, including doctors, who then have to be able to serve that relationship change with information. And today, I think, as you correctly identified, is that there's another transformation that's happening, which is that instead of us doing research, just maybe more convenient research by doing it on a device in our pocket, whatever, all of a sudden we're talking to a device and the device is providing us with something valuable back to it. And it's also happening in our pockets, but it's happening with a different kind of medium.

Yep. So the change in 2008 was the accessibility to information, which was previously inaccessible. And now the expectation on the part of the consumer is that I will talk to this thing and it will digest and provide me back with the information that I'm looking for in the way that I want it, when I want it, and how I want it. So I'm expecting information to work for me at this point. That's a substantial change.

Right now, before we go all doom and gloom and say no one is searching for optometrists near me, I'm pretty sure there's still something like 82 billion ish searches on Google on a 30 day basis, is that right?

Yeah. If you take a look and a question you could be asking is, so all this AI stuff, ChatGPT, Grok, everything else, how is that affecting search really? So are people staying on Google? So the numbers indicate that in the last 30 days, in a 30 day period, ChatGPT receives 3.8 billion visits, basically.

Sessions with ChatGPT, which is not insignificant at all for something that people didn't even know existed a year and a half ago.

Correct. Now you Compare that to 82 billion visits to Google and you see ChatGPT is in 3.8 versus 82. And now you add 28 billion of YouTube and Google's way over the 100 billion. But you compare it to Amazon. Is ChatGPT getting more traffic than Amazon? Yes, 2.82 billion for Amazon, 3.8 for Chat GPT.

Okay.

And then you put X in there as a, as both a social media platform with AI and they're only about 4.4 ish as well. And Facebook is at 12 billion. So you take a look at ChatGPT and all of a sudden 3.8 billion. When it compares to Facebook's 12 billion visits over 30 days, it's starting to get significant.

And you think about the fact that it took Facebook over a decade, maybe a decade and a half to get to that level of market share when it started being a significant tool for Everybody. In reality, ChatGPT accomplished this in a matter of 18 months or less. But the other part of it is that beyond ChatGPT, there's also other tools. So we're not necessarily adding those in.

That's true. But if you look at now, it's true there are other AI tools. Now let's compare Google's AI.

Yeah, Gemini.

278 million visits in the last 30 days versus 3.8 billion. We're talking way more than 10 times. So ChatGPT has the strong lead at this point. One thing that's interesting though is if you look at what's happening from the transformation of data at this point, you look at the practice website and now what you're going to find is that practices have the information on their website to answer the questions that people are asking, because the questions are very deep, detailed questions and the practice site doesn't have that information.

Well, it's interesting because I actually played with this a little bit for one of my lectures is I typed in, and this was a little bit concerning, but I typed in who is the best optometrist in such and such area and practice name came up. And so, okay, I'm not sure how they made that determination, but they did make a determination and they made a recommendation. And then I asked the AI tool, does this particular provider accept what vision benefits does this provider accept? And it answered, and it answered accurately and it said bsp, iMed and whatever. And then I said, does this provider see kids? And what it answered was, yes, this practice is wheelchair accessible. And I'm not sure that that was necessarily the question that I was asking. So I still messes up. But my, my issue with this is that there is a continuing growing trust. And obviously, as we see by market share, that it's picking up very, very rapidly. There is a continuing growing trust in AI because AI can help me fix my TV remote if my TV remote's not working, or if it's not syncing or something like that. And I go type in, you know, how do I fix this thing? It'll talk me through it. It'll do great tech support. And so because it is credible in one area of life, it may be perceived to be credible in other areas of life, which then actually changes the consumer mindset quite a bit when you think about leveraging that kind of technology to make decisions.

Well, so you're referring to an interesting aspect of search which now Google and others are starting to provide what's called the search generative experience at the top of the search results. So no longer are all consumers being presented with web pages and they click and off they go. Google just takes care of it for you, or ChatGPT takes care of it for you and provides that answer right up front. So now back to our earlier question of if a practice doesn't have that information, it could be that it just hallucinates and makes it up, or it could be that it is incumbent upon the practice to now say, what information should I really be providing that I don't have up on the site? So we might have discussed this in the past, which is, how do you come up with that information that should be on the site?

Right. And this is actually in the world of AI, right? Not only do you have to come up with the information, you have to come up with information that maybe other people don't have too much of.

Right? So one of the techniques that we use marketing wise, it's a book written by Marcus Sheridan. It's called they Ask youk Answer. And he actually wrote this book at least 10 years ago at this point. And the point is every practice out there that's listening right now. Patients ask you questions all the time. All the time. How many of those questions are actually answered on your website? And the answer typically is, well, not so many of them. Now is the time. Now is the time where they're going to replace asking you those questions. They're going to ask directly into the search, expecting the answer you would have given. It is now incumbent upon you to start writing down all those questions that patients are asking you at every step of the patient journey, not just when they phone, when they get into the office, when they ask, what am I going to do with my kids while I'm in my exam, when they ask, can I drive home? After, when they ask, et cetera, you got to start providing answers to all those questions.

Yeah. So when an interesting question comes up, I think that the simple thing to do in the exam lane is just open a drawer, jot it down on a piece of paper, and then once a month or something, when you're meeting with your marketing team, just give them the questions that were asked. They can log them, they can create content for you. And in my opinion, that's. That's the kind of content that is going to be relevant. And your marketing team should be writing stuff that you would say back to your patients.

And the truth is, it's hard for the marketing team to answer these questions for you. You will provide them with a question, and you will have to provide them with the answer. It is their job at that point to get that onto the site in a properly optimized format for Google and for AI at this point.

Well, and if the marketing team's good, then they probably aren't going to make you write out the answer. They're going to have you talk about it, and then they'll create the content that makes sense to. And some of that content could be, and we talked about this a little bit in the past, some of that content could be video content, some of that content could be written content. It just depends on what ranks in your area and how that content, how that content stacks up. But I agree with your general point that the way that we tend to show up, we're going to spend. When a consumer is asking questions about their condition, they're no longer trying to. They're really trying to answer the questions in a more complete way without having to go to a website and try to, you know, find the piece of text on that website that references that they want the answer. They want the answer at the top of search.

So I think we can Say Golden Elevator Nugget number one today is start writing down those questions and get those answers onto your website now before it's too late.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, go to. If we're back on track with Golden Elevator Nuggets, let's think about more AI solutions. Let's just kind of, you know, start thinking about where we see some big opportunities for. For AI solutions. Where do you want to start?

Well, AI for call tracking, as an example, is big out there right now. Everybody knows that the way you answer your phone dictates what's happening in practice. And I'm not going to get you.

Started, but you should give me. Well, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart because I believe, and we have data to support this, that more patients are calling practices this year than they did last year. And the reason they're doing that is because they're being a little bit pickier with where they're going to spend their money and they want to make sure that you take their insurance and that you're going to be able to provide for the. And that something weird isn't going to happen during their appointment. So you have an opportunity to communicate value during the call. I think that's such a great opportunity. And unfortunately, when we look at the industry, something like 25% of those calls go unanswered. And if they even go answered, of the calls that go answered, the patient opportunities that exist aren't really fulfilled. Meaning that you have new patients calling and they're not getting appointments schedule. You even have existing patients, past patients calling. And what we find is that 20% of practice, or 20% of those calls, when it's an existing patient says, I'd like an appointment on Tuesday, all of a sudden we can't schedule 20% of those appointments. And those people hang up without an appointment. This is a. I personally think this is one of the. Maybe it's not a hidden opportunity. It's one of the most obvious opportunities for practices is to look at the quality of the conversations on the phone. And we all think about capture rate in the practice, right? We know the optical capture rate, and that's really great. But. But what if there was a really good way to measure capture rate on the phone?

So we've done some of that. Given the AI technology that we have, we record tens of thousands of calls a week. And in the analysis that we have, here's a couple good stats for you. Stat. Number one, that 28% of calls. 28. I think it's 28% of calls are about an appointment. The rest are going to be service related calls, other requests for information. 28% of the people calling want to do something about booking an appointment. What percentage of those on average are booked? 28% calls. You had 1,000 calls. 280 of them are about an appointment. The percentage of those that actually turn into a booked appointment, it's only 72% of those. So 28% of the opportunities are lost on the phone.

I think more because, and this is where I love this topic, because if you said 72, we have a call center and because we developed a call center, I'm not selling anybody call center services. I'm simply saying objectively, clinically, what's possible. 109% of meaning for every 100 patients that express a desire to schedule an appointment in some capacity, you can schedule 109 appointments.

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

Well, so the technique is called farming. And I would say that the technique is simple enough to explain, although it's complex to execute, because you want to do this with nuance. But the farming technique is. And Daniel, while I've got, you know, I've got your appointment here next Tuesday at 3:00 and while I've got my schedule pulled up, is there anybody else in your household who needs an exam? And it's as simple as that. But it's also as complicated as the nuanced parts of the conversation, different parts of the conversation where this needs to come up. But what I'm finding is that that 09%, minus the 72% you just talked about, I mean the delta is substantial for practices to be able to. There's 37% of appointments right off the bat that you could have had in your practice from those opportunities.

And given like you mentioned, the increased frequency with which people are phoning, the opportunities are just tremendous. If you were to increase your phone capture rate by 1%, given you're talking over the course of a year, tens of thousands of dollars by 1%, you do that by 37%. A practice that's averaging 1,000 calls a month could basically make almost a half a million more dollars a year simply by farming, getting that opportunity over 100% technique.

But the reality, okay, so now let's go back to the old way of solving this problem. The old way of solving this problem is Eugene, if Eugene is the practice manager, would have to sit there and would have to listen to every call that's coming in and would have to say, is this a patient appointment call? Yes. No. Okay. Okay. If it's a patient appointment call. Okay. How did we do? This one was pretty good. Okay. This one was not so good. This one we totally botched. Okay. I got to give Susie some feedback. I got to give Steve some feedback. And, you know, and then we get into this thing of, like, it just. It's too big of a task. What if the AI solution did that for you?

Yeah. And I think a lot of people know now that there are many of these solutions that are out there. Many services in the industry right now are actually at the point where they have AI listening to the calls, taking care of all that, giving you data back as to which was a good call, bad call, what to do about it, making suggestions, give me all those stats. You don't have to do it anymore. But the practice has to get out there and find that technology and adopt it, because it's just far too valuable to go without it.

Right. And I think this is exactly your point, is that. That whatever you have to invest in this technology is going to be a tiny fraction of the possible upside that this could have for your practice if you're doing two things. Number one is if you're using that technology. Number two is if you're. If that technology surgically raises to your attention the calls that need to be used as feedback opportunities for your team that you actually provide that feedback, that'll do three things for you. Number one is that providing that feedback, your team will know that you're listening to calls which automatically will make them better. Number two is it'll create quality conversations in your practice about how calls should actually be handled. And number three is it creates this constant. This mindset of constant improvement in your practice where people are potentially elevating and innovating the script. Because the second that you say, okay, my practice capture rate on the phone is 72% and I want to go to 75. But once you get to 75, you're going to want to go to 80. And once you get to 80, you get to 85. And people are going to start thinking, how can I get better at this? How can I get better this? So making this a part of your regular management side, leveraging the AI technology is super important, in my opinion.

Practices often get to that point and they say, do we have what it takes internally to actually do that training to get those numbers up? And I think you mentioned the call center offering that you have, and I know some of our practices have used that call center for actual consulting. So before they actually use a call center, they'll say, can you train us? And then if the practice can improve enough where they take over and they get the high percentage of themselves, they go for it. If not, I've seen our practices just say, just give us the call center. We've tried to train our staff. We don't have the resources internally to do that. Let's just use the call center, and then the numbers go through the roof. Either way, the point is, make the decision, do something, and get the help.

Get the help from wherever you need to get the help to understand how you can make their. That this is such a huge revenue opportunity. Okay, so we got this one. Let's go to the next one. This is. So we got another golden elevator nugget. Maybe this is like a long elevator ride because I got a little too passionate on that one. But, you know, maybe rode up and down and whatever. But, but, but I do think, and I talk about this sometimes on the show as well, is that you just have to answer the phone and do a really good job because it's possible and it's definitely an opportunity and leverage AI to help you with that. Okay, so that's one more. Let's talk about another AI idea. What do you got?

Another AI idea? We've got AI like GPTs that we can offer to practices, for example. So, and I think you came up, that we were discussing. You came up with a few recently.

Yeah. So that one is the. The solution to the Just a minute. Questions that all practice managers are bombarded with on a regular basis. So practice managers are frequently your most valuable people in the practice. You spend. They spend a lot of time of their time answering the. Hey, got a quick second. Where do we put this? And who's the vendor that does that? And, you know, how do I schedule PTO or whatever, right? Like, and all of those things are frequently things that are in a standard operating procedure that already exists in the practice. You just upload it to, as you said, a custom GPT. We named ours genie, but we upload something to genie, and then GENIE is able to. And then the employee. The first line of defense is the employee going to GENIE and saying, hey, Genie, where do I put this thing? Or who is the vendor I call for that? Or how do I use my pto? And Jeanne answers the question. And if Jeanne doesn't know the answer, then Jeanne, this is the hard part, right? Is programming the prompt that says, please don't hallucinate. If you don't know. Ask sue, the practice manager. Right. And then sue gets the question. And if sue is proactive about it, sue says, okay, I'm going to answer this question in writing and then I'm going to give it to Jeanne. So that Jeanne now has augmented her capabilities to answer future questions of the sort.

That's a good one. We have a number of people might have seen. A few months ago, somebody posted on LinkedIn create a GPT which can read your competitors reviews.

Oh, yeah.

Well, we went ahead and we built it and so now the GPT can go read the competitor's reviews and then it understands where the competitor actually has strengths and weaknesses. And now it can be used to compare it back to your practice and show you, well, if you want to compete, here's what you can do with regards to others. So that's an example of a relatively simple GPT that can go ahead and get those things done and to the benefit of the practice. And I think you can also use it to feed your Google AdWords also, because you can generate the keywords now that people are looking for that you may have a competitive advantage over.

Yeah. Your SEO strategy and your Google Ads strategy because you'll understand what patients in your area really demand. So that's a brilliant one. I love that. What's another one?

Well, replying to reviews is something that everybody knows they have to do. Most people are.

Yeah, there's this updated HIPAA regulation stuff that's been kind of floating around. You got to be super careful with how you apply to reviews now, given the practices that are being taken to task for HIPAA for simply saying thank you so much for your review, Daniel, it was great to have you in the office. Even that is not HIPAA compliant because it acknowledges the patient, doctor patient relationship. So. But we're stuck in this stupid thing of like, we have to reply to reviews because then our patients will. Otherwise patients won't really think that we care about customer service.

So what do we do? We say something along the lines of, wow, we love it when people have a wonderful experience in our office.

Yes. Thank you for your feedback.

Thank you. Yes.

All right, when we come back, we got to take a short break. When we come back, let's talk about other technology that is now available to help drive practice volume or help reduce costs.

You got it.

[Jessica Bettencourt]

I am Jessica Bettencourt and I am the owner here in Bronx Optical Center. Well, I was first introduced to CareCredit when I started in the industry. So it's been for 12 years I've been knowing about CareCredit and I believe in it. Our staff members have CareCredit. I personally have CareCredit. CareCredit is introduced as soon as the patient walks in the door. And it's. We advertise it, we have the app on our phone and we actually show the patient how it works so they can feel more comfortable. It's not that we're providing an option just to provide it because CareCredit is great. It is great, but we actually believe in it, so it makes it easier to talk about it. CareCredit is well known, very positive and amazing company, which helps a lot. So it's not like it's a company that just started yesterday and people don't believe in it or they don't. They're afraid to apply because it's a company that is not. Doesn't have a good reputation. CareCredit has an amazing reputation all over the nation. So it makes it better for us here to provide that option, a financing option. Here, CareCredit facilitate not only for eyewear or for contacts or for fashion in general. Right. It provides also option so that patients can pay for their eye exam, comprehensive eye exam, more detailed eye exam to look at the back of the eye to make sure that they don't have cataracts or glaucoma. Here we don't talk about only eye care or eyewear when it comes to CareCredit. We let the patients know that that card is used in any facility that accepts CareCredit. And I give them the example of myself that I have tools, standard poodles, not cheap at all. And CareCredit has given us as a family an opportunity, an option to provide for our dogs, taking them to the veterinarian services when we don't have a health insurance for the dogs. And CareCredit gives an option for us. CareCredit helps me seize the opportunity here in Bronx Optical center by seeing more patients and making a difference in the community.

[Daniel Roston]

Foreign welcome back to the Power Hour. I have with me my guest Daniel Rosten. And we are talking about using technology, using AI and innovations. And we're here live at the CareCrowded booth. Now, before the break, we talked about applications, practical applications of AI in the practice to help you grow, drive revenue or stop whatever bleeding. Now let's talk about other technology that may be overlooked opportunities inside the practice. One place I want to start is technology that I would say every practice is using because technically it's the law. I think electronic health records are the law. So everybody's got an ehr. That EHR has a lot of information in it. Is there a technology focused way to leverage that technology that we're already using and leverage off of it and help practices grow?

Yes, absolutely. If you look at, even back up for a second, the AI part of the discussion, AI is all based off data, right? Without that data, the AI is useless. Now, what else can the EHR power? There are a lot of marketing solutions that the EHR can power. Some of the simple ones, you can't put a scheduler online without pulling the information from the ehr. You can't do recalls and reminders of your patients without pulling information from the ehr. And you can't get review requests without pulling that on a constant basis from the hr. Very straightforward ways in which the EHR data can help power your marketing. And if practices are not doing at least those three right now, golden elevator nugget, boom, boom, boom, Go for it.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you've got, you have to, you have to be thinking about the fact that patient convenience and patient, patients have an expectation. This is what I'm finding is that patients now have a bare minimum expectation of both customer service, but also a digital experience. And the customer service component is so straightforward.

Right?

Like, we all know that we can't be mean to our patients, but think of digital customer service as an extension of that. And part of digital customer service is the fact that you're going to remind your patients that digitally that you're going to send them a text or an email, that you're going to let them schedule an appointment after hours from your website or at least give them a choice to schedule that or to make a call. So we got that. I think that's relatively straightforward. Now let's go to maybe less obvious uses of EHR in terms of technology or growth.

I think we touched upon this, if not very briefly last time, but we alluded to it and that is we know that a lot of patients come in via Google Ads and practices spend money on Google Ads. But how do you know if the, the Google Ads are being well spent, the Google Ad dollars are being well spent, when it could be that the practice happens to be booked up this week and yet the Google Ads money is just being thrown out there, Patients are calling in and the practice is, I'm sorry, we're booked, I'm sorry, we're booked out for another week and a half and yet the Google Ads keep running. If indeed. A second ago we discussed the fact that The EHR powers a scheduler. It means you know what the schedule is. If we now know what the schedule is, perhaps the person running the Google Ads should be looking on a constant basis at what the schedule availability is like and adjusting and dialing the DOL up and down. Because when the Google Ads get dialed up, it'll produce patients within 72 hours. You dial it back down and it won't. But you never should turn it off. The second you turn off Google Ads, even though the practice is very busy, the Google Ads loses its effectiveness and takes months to relearn. So dial it down, but use the data from your schedule to see how much ad money you should be spending. Because you could be leaving money on.

The table and technology can absolutely support that. From my vantage point, one of the things I think about is multi location practices. So if you've got, and I hear this all the time, people say, well, you know, okay, we got five locations, let's split our Google Ads dollars thousand dollars per location. And the reality is that location one might be super busy, location two might be super slow, location three might be sometimes busy, sometimes slow. And location four might not have any appointments available for three months. So why would you evenly split the budget? Why not take the whole budget of $5,000 and optimize it based off of actual availability within each of the practices?

Indeed, that is what we do.

Right. So there you go. It's a technology that leverages AI and EHR integration.

You got it.

What's another one?

So I think EHR data is very beneficial when you consider the goal of actually trying to see what marketing is effective. So we were talking a moment ago about phone calls coming to the office and we said, oh, those phone calls are appointments, those phone calls aren't appointments. That's wonderful.

You're talking about matchbacking.

Yes. So the question being, how did that phone call come into being? What caused that phone call to happen? How do we match back the fact that there was an appointment scheduled with an actual click, a Google Ad, an SEO, organic, social, whatever the case may be. And that answer lies again in the EHR combined with Google Analytics.

Right. So you've got the ability. And I think this is really, really important. And I think this is such a, I think such an overlooked opportunity is to say again, how do you optimize your marketing budget? And optimizing the marketing budget doesn't come from paying the smallest amount of dollars for marketing. It's about getting the most amount of return for every marketing activity. And again, many Practices say, okay, I'm just going to, you know, pick a number out of thin air and that's what I'm pay for my website and I'm going to pick a number out of thin air and that's what I'm going to pay for my SEO. I'm going to pick a number out of thin air and that's what I'm going to pay for my Google Ads. I'm going to pick a number out of thin air, that's what I'm going to pay for my campaigns for reactivation. And all of these numbers should not necessarily be picked out of thin air. They should be leveraged or they should be something that is determined as a percentage of the value that those activities drive. So if you happen to know that your campaigns, you spent $500 on campaigns directly to your patients and that generated $82,000, and then you happen to know that you spent $500 on campaigns on social media and that generated $25, where do you put the next $500? I'm trying to go with extreme examples here, but where do you put the next $500? And the, I mean, it's not, it's not rocket science, but the problem is that people don't know. People say, well, I'm going to go, I really want a good social media presence. I really want a good, you know, I really want this, I really want that. But what's the value?

And the challenge lies in effectively the marketing company that you're working with, the tech stack that they have to have to work with the EHR to work with the analytics to have that track all the way through. It's not just, can you imagine that you have to stick the tracking into a call so that when the call turns into an appointment, you have to know what click went into the call and then there's a call. It's very complicated to do in a nutshell. And it's no wonder that many practices can't get it. The vendors that they're working with don't even have it right. But that's an up and coming opportunity, which my guess is by the time you and I speak next, I think we might have a solution.

Yes, it seems like that's one that you and I will be collaborating on quite a bit because it requires, it's.

Critical to practice success.

It requires a lot of, and you know, again, think about that as an opportunity. And I call that blank check marketing and understanding your overall patient value. Because every practice knows that a patient is not A patient is not a patient, right? You have a patient walks in who's going to have a dry eye, dry a whole dry eye suite of procedures for $2,500. And then you have another patient who walks in who looks in exactly the same, but that patient is going to buy the cheapest pair of frames you possibly can. So they can just get whatever VSP covers and nothing else. And then you get another patient who's going to be in exam only that you're letting them walk out the door potentially. And that patient without some serious work. So when you look at the kinds of patients that you have walking into your practice, understanding again which marketing technique brings which patients is such an important thing, but it cannot be done without an EHR integration. Because just saying brought 10 patients, and those 10 patients, you know, you have an average revenue per patient of $500. So that's $5,000. That's not a credible number. But SEO brought seven patients and those seven patients on average spent $2,000. Well, actually those patients not even on average, those patients spent $14,281.31. We know that because that's in your EHR. Anyway, I think that's another golden elevator nugget is track which marketing techniques and then invest heavier into the marketing techniques that have the highest roi.

What that really does is it positions marketing differently than it has been in the past. In the past, marketing has been more of an activity that we have to get marketing done, and now we're viewing marketing differently. How would you define this new view of marketing?

Well, I think there's. You kind of have to position it one step back is that if you have the EHR integration into a practice, then you can understand how that practice is running. And understanding how that practice is running, you can understand the exam only rate, for example, you can understand the second pair rate, for example, you can understand the, I don't know, the number of warranties that are sold, for example. And all of those things. If you have the EHR connection and you have the data, all of those things can be used to advise a practice. Now, the problem is that that dashboard alone is super helpful if you know what to do with that information, right? Like I get the numbers and I see that my exam only increased a little bit and I know how to go proceed with that solution with that information. I see that my, you know, my revenue per frame or my average frame sale is decreasing a little bit. I know how to go after that metric, but most people don't. First of all, most people don't look at that data whether they have a dashboard or not. But even if they're super disciplined and they have the data, then sometimes they, you know, they know what to do with it, sometimes they don't. If they don't know what to do with it, sometimes they'll hire a consultant and the consultant will give them solutions and ideas and whatever how to, how to handle that. But I think this is what you're getting at. What's the role of marketing beyond that? And if I think about it, well, it's like, well, what if you used the EHR data to identify the problems and then you leveraged marketing think to solve some of those problems?

That's it. So marketing becomes a solution to a problem and the marketing has to adapt to the problem depending on what the problem is. You can't just go to a marketing company say, I'll take package A and B. No, we got what's your problem? And then let's design marketing around it, which is really a lot of the technology that, that we're talking about today.

Yeah. And one size does not fit all when it comes to marketing. You're absolutely right. You can't just go and say, I'll take the 599 package because that looks like it's going to fit in my budget. The point is, it may be a complete waste of your budget to go with a 599 package. And you should have gone with a $5,000 package because you can track that. That $5,000 package is going to bring you $500,000 over the course of a year versus the 599 package, which is not a good fit for your practice and you're just going to waste 6,000 or $7,000 on it. So I think that's. To your point is that the role of marketing as a, as almost an automated solution to the practice problem requires you to know what the problem is at any given time and requires you to track and kind of position that problem as a key opportunity. So I think that's another piece of technology that we should be considering on the forefront of where are we going and what's happening.

Agreed. And integrate it with as many different information sources as you can.

Now, I think there's still a concept of patient communication. Right. Like you still have to communicate with patients at some point in order for them to do something. And all practices have large databases of past patients. And so I always talk about, you know, give a lot of lectures on patient reactivation and how you know, patients who haven't been in your practice in four years are still fertile ground to bring back into the practice. I believe that up to, we're testing right now up to 72 months since last exam, and we're finding very positive results, you know, and double digits of patients that can be reactivated. So my question to you though is what's the optimal means of communication? What's the optimal method of communication, Daniel, from what you're seeing?

Well, you've got email versus text. And the two of them obviously have fundamental differences in how they behave and how people behave with them. Texts are obviously good for shorter, more timely pieces of information. In fact, stats show that 90% of people read their text messages within the first three minutes. Now, let's make a joke here. 90% of people read their emails within the first three days.

Maybe. Depends on who it's from. For me, it might be within the first three. Never.

So it's clear that if your goal is to try to get information out to somebody in a short format quickly, you're going to get obviously a much higher open rate. We're talking maybe even 98% open rate on the tech site versus a 20 to 30% email open rate at all. And that's going to happen within the first few minutes via text versus the first few days. But it goes further. Now that you've gotten the patient to actually read and do something quick, there is still a role for email because email is that long format. Email has a higher trust component to it.

It does.

It furthers a bigger relationship with the patient and it enables you to actually educate the patient via email, which you can't really do via text.

Right. I think there's a different layer of engagement that comes from an email standpoint. And if you really want to engage a patient, and I do want to say about email, is that my point about I'll never read your email? Well, I'll never read your email if I don't know who you are. However, if my best friend sends me an email, I'll read the email. If my doctor sends me an email, I'll probably read the email. Depends on how much I like that doctor or what my relationship is with that doctor. But for the most part, I think a lot of practices will will argue that their relationship with their patient is strong in the exam room. And even years later, we've proven that it can be strong via email. So I think to your point is that there's a lot of engagement opportunity when it comes to email, especially when you can embed things like images and video and that kind of stuff right into the email. And the other part of it is that, you know, where does it go when you click on something, whether it's from a text or from an email. I just want to remind everybody that that shouldn't really go to your website per se. It shouldn't go to the homepage of your website at least.

Yes, the homepage. The homepage is too much of a catch all for a specific message that you're getting to the patient. Right?

Right. So I think there needs to be a dedicated. Every single email or every single text that you send needs to have a dedicated landing page which can then be another extension of that engagement of the patient so that the patient can actually learn both within the email and within the landing page or within the text and then the landing page that follows.

And let's go with a golden elevator nugget rule which is when the patient clicks, be it on the text via, on the email and they get to that landing page, assume they will go no further. You have that one page, so you're going to have to put content on that page that relates to the topic at hand in the text message or in the email. And that page will now have to include all the other information that a patient needs in order to make an appointment decision right then and there on the spot. If you don't do that, you're losing them.

Right. So you got to include the insurance information, you got to include the, what's the doctor location? And of course, most important thing, a way to schedule.

Way to schedule.

Right. Because what's the point of sending it all out if there's not really a clear call to action?

And, and now you add the matchback component, you know, oh, that email generated clicks to that landing page and then they clicked there and they scheduled and we're tracking the whole thing back. That's starting to get valuable.

The idea that they made a phone call from that landing page and then AI listened to that phone call and told you whether the staff member who answered that phone call did a good job or not a good job. And whether you need to work on your phone skills or whether, or whether you could have converted more of those types of patients. But what we know is that some of our most valuable patients are the pickiest. Right. And we also know that circling back to the consumer's relationship with information, we also know that the consumer is getting overwhelmed and overloaded with information and they're trying to use AI to cut down on the noise. But in all reality, there's much more noise being created today than ever. And so we have to get really good and really surgically accurate at serving the patient's needs and and also serving the consumer profile of the type of patient we're trying to attract.

Perhaps next time when we have our golden elevator nuggets three, we'll discuss patient segmentation because not all patients should get the same message. They should not all be treated equally. And let's talk about that next time.

All right, let's put that on the list. I think we're out of time for today. Daniel, thank you so much for joining me on the Power Hour. This has been really fun.

My pleasure, Eugene. Thank you.

[Eugene Shotsman]

Today's show is sponsored by CareCredit. CareCredit is a health and wellness card that has accepted over 270,000 locations in the US with over 12 million cardholders and also flexible financing options. Patients can pay over time for eye care and eyewear that they want and need. If you'd like to evaluate getting more involved with CareCredit at your practice, please check out the show notes for more information. How to get started.