Unlocking Practice Software: Your Guide to its Best Use-Cases

When it comes to managing efficiencies day-to-day in practice, an often-underutilised asset is your practice management software. Throughout this blog I’ll include use cases where your software could be better adopted to streamline the eyecare journey for your patients and staff. These use-cases are also valuable considerations when weighting up PMS options. I’ll be using Acuitas 2 as well as Ocuco’s latest software Acuitas 3 as examples; however, the learnings can be applied across multiple different PMS solutions.  Acuitas, Ocuco’s PMS system, has been trusted by over 300 customers worldwide for more than 20 years. My own journey with Acuitas 2 started in 2002 when I worked with Rayner Opticians as a Dispensing Optician. Over time, I've come to appreciate its robust and reliable features. However, I've noticed that many users, myself included, often overlook some of the more nuanced capabilities of a PMS that greatly enhance a practice’s working day. 

Enhancing Workflow Efficiency in Optical Software

It's important that your PMS improves workflows and processes within your practice. 

For example, when completing a dispense, eyecare professionals must be able to efficiently search for the correct products. When dealing with a large inventory of lenses, finding the right one can be a challenge, but by utilising features such as personalised tags, you can narrow the search down in seconds and find what you need much quicker. 

The ability to copy and modify your orders is another feature that can make a huge difference in your daily operations. Many times, patients may request multiple pairs of glasses, and to recreate each pair from scratch every time can be time-consuming and even lead to errors. With a simple copy function, this can be avoided altogether. You can duplicate an order and edit it as necessary, making it more likely to avoid errors.

Being able to rename these duplicates is also useful to keep them organised and easily accessible.

It's important to have a system that will keep track of everything, even when you need to pause your work in the middle of a dispense to make an appointment or check another patient's file. Your software also needs to spot errors and remind its users to enter necessary information such as mandatory fields when completing a dispense.

Driving Efficiencies With the Latest Developments in Optical Software 

As an eyecare professional, it’s important that your optical software evolves to meet the changing requirements of your business as well as requirements such as GDPR etc. For example, ensuring the safety of your patients’ data through secure and compliant record keeping is key to building trust with patients. Certifications such as SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001:2017 are key, in addition to GDPR compliancy. 

The ability to submit GOS forms electronically through your PMS also greatly reduces the time spent day-to-day in practice processing claims. Acuitas 3’s extensive eGOS capabilities across England and Scotland has been a major driver of efficiency for current users.

As patients look for more flexibility when booking appointments, offering the ability to book online with an easy-to-navigate tool is vital. From a practice perspective, it’s important to consider the level of flexibility your online booking tool provides and how to best utilise it, in order to reduce your admin, not add to it. Configuring various appointment types will prompt patients book to relevant slots, ensuring optimum workflow throughout the day.

Taking Acuitas 3’s diary setup as an example. It allows you to create and edit your visit types for patients that display on your practice’s website. Users can determine what appointment types are active on their website and their descriptions, as well as how the appointment types are displayed.

The system can also determine what staff members can have appointments booked online or in store. This way, practices can have locum optometrists on their systems, without being displayed as a member of staff on their official websites. This feature is configurable, as only a simple widget needs to be added to your website.

Tailoring Optical Software to Your Practice’s Needs

It’s worth considering the level of configurability a PMS offers and how best to utilise it from a practice perspective. For example, each member of your team may want their frequently used icons on the home page to appear at the top and arranged together as a 'Favourites' group. Each user should also have the ability to create patient or store related tasks where the progress and details of these can be reviewed in one centralised module. This is something I would have greatly appreciated when I was still working in practice!

Additionally, it is now possible to create quick links to suppliers websites with the use of internal intranets directly from the home screen in Acuitas. So, whether it’s Zeiss, Essilor or Hoya, you can streamline your processes with just a simple click.

Conclusion

In summary, optical practice management software offers a range of features that are designed to improve your practice’s processes and tasks. With a little attention to detail, you can enhance your usage of your PMS to bolster practice efficiencies day-to-day. As technological advances continue to evolve so too will optical software offerings.