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It doesn't seem that long ago, although it's nearly 22 years ago, that I sold my first optometric turnkey system back in April 1984! Our newly released “Eyecare OfficeMate” software was bundled with an IBM Model 8080 with a huge 20MB Corvus hard drive, the size of a suitcase with a built-in tape backup system! This was quite a turnkey system for its time and within the first few months, about 30 ECPs joined me in this leap of faith—computerizing their practices! Much skepticism existed at that time about the need for an eyecare office computer system. What was the ROI? Who needed a computer? Was there really a place in an eyecare practice for a computer system that cost $14,000? Well, turn the clock ahead to 2006 and what a difference 22 years makes in one's life, much less a “technological life.” Now it's a challenge to find an office without a computer and the practice management/electronic medical record system is the ‘nerve center” or “hub” for the TIP, or “Technology Integrated Practice,” as we call it at OfficeMate. At OfficeMate, we see this trend escalating exponentially every month. Many, many new clients join our OfficeMate family each month, and a significant number OfficeMate practices are installing ExamWRITER electronic medical records and demanding complete integration with their digital instruments. The era of “the paperless office ” is here, finally. OfficeMate is fully committed to the “TIP” throughout your entire practice from the reception area to the dispensary. The OfficeMate team is partnering with industry leaders like Marchon (our parent company), Eyemaginations, Marco, Optos, Essilor, and others to design a fully integrated suite of software to manage the complete lifecycle of your patients and your practice. In a few weeks, OfficeMate is holding our first annual Review and Planning session in Irvine for 35 of our key team members from across the country. Our goal is to examine our successes and challenges during 2006 and plan for 2007. One primary focus of our meeting will be designing new opportunities to enhance our client experiences with OfficeMate, ExamWRITER, and iPoint. We'll review every aspect of our business, but we're committed to maintaining the leadership position in the eyecare software industry through 2007 and beyond.
My best wishes to you for a happy and healthy holiday season! C. Edward Buffington |
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Insurance audit procedures can result in a patient "chargeback" to collect a previous insurance overpayment or lab fee, or pay an amount higher than a patient's open balance. For more information on insurance chargebacks, see the "How To - Recording Insurance Charge Backs" iTrain training and demonstration at http://www.officemate.net/training_om_online.aspx . Note: The patient's insurance must have been billed through the Fee Slip window before you post a chargeback to the patient's account. An overpayment or underpayment chargeback can be recorded for patients with or without open balances.
This tip appears in our online Knowledge Base. For more tips like this, visit our Web site, www.officemate.net, click Support, select your product, and click Knowledge Base. |
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Before we implement these new online account features, we will e-mail you to notify you of the date these features will be available. When the online account features become available, go to www.officemate.net and enter your OfficeMate account number (i.e., phone number) in the Username and Password text boxes. After you log in, you can change your password. When you return to the Web site on subsequent visits, you will need to enter your OfficeMate account number (i.e., phone number) in the Username text box and enter the password you created after previously logging into the site in the Password text box. If you have not changed your password from the default OfficeMate account number (i.e., phone number) password, you will simply enter your account number in the Password text box; after you log in, you can change your password. In order to make sure you receive information about the new online account features, we need to have your current e-mail address in our files. If your e-mail address has changed recently, please e-mail us at changeemail@officemate.net and let us know what your new e-mail address is. Stay tuned to your Inbox and our Web site for more information on these exciting new online account features! Carrie Damschroder |
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Patients appreciate high-tech practices. We often hear the patient reaction to technology referred to as the "wow factor.” Indeed, technologies that patients can see and interact with make a lasting impression on their perception of your practice. When these technologies improve patient satisfaction, they lead to patient loyalty and boost patient referrals. | |||
No part of your business can benefit more from patient facing technology than your optical. Patients don't understand spectacle lens design. To the average patient, all lenses are just clear plastic. Virtual try-on technologies, like iPoint VTO, provide patient education on lens technologies by explaining the difference between lens materials and progressive designs as well as illustrating the benefits of AR, polarization, and photochromics. These demonstrations convey the value of lens options. When patients understand the value of premium lens options, they want premium lenses. Turning your patient interaction with iPoint VTO into patient referrals is easy. You can allow your patients to e-mail photos of themselves in their new glasses to their friends and family right from your dispensary. E-mail quickly spreads the word that your practice is doing something innovative. |
iPoint VTO demonstrating the benefits of AR coating. |
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Virtual try-on is great technology to leverage in your PR and advertising. Several marketing tools will help promote new technologies in your practice:
Patients increasingly see themselves as consumers of health care and look to their physician for better, more efficient, and more effective service. In consumer mode, patients want information about features, benefits, and value. Technologies like iPoint VTO deliver what patients want as well as providing that powerful "wow factor” for your practice. iPoint VTO is now available as an add-on module for OfficeMate and ExamWRITER. As an integrated component of OfficeMate, iPoint VTO is the quickest and easiest-to-use virtual try-on system available. For more information on how iPoint VTO can benefit your practice, go to www.officemate.net/ipoint_overview.aspx or contact the Sales team at 800.269.3666 or sales@officemate.net. David Markle |
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You can register for classes, including the VSP Interface, RLISYS to OfficeMate Conversion, and iPoint VTO (our Virtual Try-On software), through OSSU. To register, call us at 800.269.3666 and select option 3, or go to our Web site, www.officemate.net. OSSU not only serves new OSS clients. You can purchase additional training hours at any time to accommodate new employee training or to bring any staff member up to speed with our ever-improving software. We look forward to serving your training needs. Marsha Vaughn |
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Every business, whether large or small at one point or another wrestles with the issue of "what discount should I offer?" If you're considering discounting your fees in order to draw more patients into your office and increase your practice's profitability, you may want to think twice. Having more patients does not necessarily translate to higher profitability. For starters, patients who are enticed to your practice by lower fees will invariably be lured away from your practice when they find a better deal down the street. In reality, there will always be someone out there willing to do what you do for less. Don't forget that discounting your fees comes right out of your profit margin. Your operating costs will remain the same, so any discounts you offer are coming out of your pocket. Additionally, you will need to dramatically increase your patient volume in order to maintain the same level of profitability you enjoyed before discounting your fees. To illustrate, consider the following scenario. Let's say a solo practitioner who performs 3,000 eye exams each year charges an average fee of $100 per exam and has an overhead of 60 percent. The gross income from eye exams for this practitioner would be $300,000 with operating costs of $180,000. This leaves a net profit of $120,000 and a profit margin of 40 percent. Now let's say this practitioner discounts his fees by 20 percent and he performs the same 3,000 eye exams. His gross income will drop to $240,000, but his operating costs will still remain at $180,000, leaving just $60,000 in net profit. The discounted fees effectively slashed the practice's profits in half! The profit margin is a mere 25 percent. So, how many additional patients would this practitioner need to see in order to just return to the previous levels of profitability? Assuming the profit margin stays at 25 percent, the doctor would have to see 6,000 patients, bringing in a gross income of $480,000. That's twice as many patients as before to reach the profit of $120,000. While discounting your fees may increase the foot traffic through your office, you will have to work much harder, faster, and longer hours to make the same profit. So remember, discounting your fees may not be all it's cracked up to be! |
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Schools and colleges are looking to OfficeMate and ExamWRITER to help them provide outstanding patient care and an EMR learning experience. Here is an overview of the latest uses of OfficeMate in higher education The University of Houston College of Optometry deploys OfficeMate and ExamWRITER in a mobile clinic platform. Wherever the clinic goes, so does OfficeMate! This is the forth clinic in the UH System using ExamWRITER as its EMR system. In addition to the mobile clinic, ExamWRITER is fully deployed in the Bridge Builders Clinic in Dallas and the Casa De Nuevo and Good Neighbor Clinics in Houston . The Indiana University School of Optometry is in the final phases of implementing OfficeMate in all of its clinics and will soon be implementing ExamWRITER. The Vision Care Institute of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care , Inc. now uses OfficeMate and ExamWRITER in a fully networked environment that includes all conference rooms. This prestigious facility has chosen ExamWRITER and OfficeMate as the EMR to demonstrate the Exam Room of the Future as part of the course curriculum to all attendees each week. In addition to providing the software that supports education, OfficeMate Software Solutions sponsors and supports outstanding continuing education programs and seminars for all practitioners across the United States . OSS recently supported a series of four informative, seven-hour CE courses in glaucoma, featuring nationally renowned speakers Ron Melton, Randall Thomas, and Chuck Brownlow. The courses were hosted by Ohio State , Indiana University, University of Alabama , and Southern College of Optometry. These courses bring the most current thinking in the treatment and documentation of all forms of glaucoma. OSS is proud to have participated in two seven-hour CE courses in association with the University of Houston College of Optometry, Alcon, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Vistakon, Optos, and Marco Ophthalmics. The topic of the seminars was The Office of the Future , featuring the OfficeMate Suite as the patients' “information highway” and a repository for special testing results. These meetings were hosted at the Alcon Campus in Ft. Worth and at the College of Optometry , University Eye Institute at the University of Houston , Central Campus. The seminars featured a fully interactive lecture series by such noted speakers as Dr. Kim Castleberry and Dr. Joe De Loach. The seminars demonstrated the superior level of care that is supported by the electronic medical record environment. This series of Grand round cases were all documented live using ExamWRITER and OfficeMate. OfficeMate Software Solutions continues to be fully committed to supporting training and education in the eyecare industry. Dr. Ian Lane |
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We are in the process of releasing OfficeMate Suite version 7.0 to all clients with a current, active account. We are staggering release shipments over a period of time to avoid extended hold times in the support and training departments. During the mass release of version 7.0, our call volume will be higher than normal. We highly suggest that you use the resources readily available to you (e.g., user's guides, F1 online help, online Knowledge Base, iTrains, OSSU courses) to find answers to your questions before calling our support line. Thank you for your patience and understanding during this busy release and upgrade time. OfficeMate Users ExamWRITER Users Contact Client Services at 800.942.5353 (7am – 5pm Monday through Friday) or support@officemate.net if you cannot find an answer to your question using the resources listed above. If you send us an e-mail with your support question, please provide your phone number so we can call you back, if necessary. If you call us, note that your calls are answered live by our knowledgeable Client Services team members who will assist you with your support issues. Calls are escalated on an “as needed” basis and are routed to client service professionals, programmers, and other appropriate personnel. Every call you make to the OfficeMate Client Services team is logged and saved to create an ongoing user profile history to help us better serve you in the future. Violet Baker |
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Recently, our Documentation department expanded to include a new senior technical writer, Michael Opsteegh. Michael's expertise will allow the department to provide more customized documentation to you and to answer your questions on our online Knowledge Base even faster. It is our goal to provide you with all the answers to your questions, even before you ask them! We also want you to have access to help resources 24/7. The expansion of our department will help us meet our goals and help you use OfficeMate, ExamWRITER, and iPoint VTO with even more speed and accuracy. Carrie Damschroder |
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Why do I have to pay the entire ASMA fee when I am only using parts of the program? What happens if I do not renew my ASMA? What doesn't my ASMA cover? When will I be able to renew my ASMA online? How can I contact the Renewal Department? Karen M. Kingsbury |
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Rob Adams |
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Because spam filters are all different, legitimate e-mail messages can sometimes be filtered as junk mail. We highly suggest that you add the OfficeMate Software Solutions domain (officemate.net) to your safe senders list in your e-mail program. Adding us to your safe senders list will ensure that our e-mail messages and newsletters successfully arrive in your Inbox. If you use Microsoft Outlook 2000 or higher, follow the instructions below to add the OfficeMate domain name to your safe senders list:
If you use another e-mail program, look in their Help program to find instructions on how to add the OfficeMate domain name to your safe senders list. |
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Very soon, OfficeMate.net will feature a user login section with OfficeMate Software Solutions user-only features such as access to user's guides, product enhancement lists, other documentation, online iTrain videos, and the Knowledge Base. You will also be able to view your account information, ASMA renewal date, and ASMA cost, and change the e-mail address we have on file for you. And, soon, you will be able to renew your ASMA directly through our Web site! These changes are being made so that you have more control over your account and so you can gain privileged access to award-winning documentation, an expanded library of online training videos, and answers to over 600 questions in our online Knowledge Base. 
What does my Annual Software Maintenance Agreement (ASMA) cover?
Although 2006 was a banner year for the Development team at OfficeMate, 2007 is shaping up to be even better. Our biggest update in some time, version 7.0, has come out of beta with flying colors and is now being shipped to all clients. In 2007, we will see even greater enhancements to help you manage your practice as efficiently as possible. In early 2007, we will begin beta testing a completely rewritten Appointment Scheduler. This new Scheduler has been written using the latest .NET technologies and is a glimpse into the future of OfficeMate. The . NET platform offers incredible advances in security, user experience, and productivity. Within the next year, OfficeMate will also be moving to a new SQL database platform. This change has been in development for over two years and in live beta sites for over a year. Utilizing the latest Microsoft SQL Server 2005 technology, OfficeMate products will offer enhanced speed, reliability, and scalability. These advances are paving the way for new multilocation versions of both OfficeMate and ExamWRITER. Look for these and many more exciting new announcements in 2007. 
In our continuing effort to streamline our processes and draw upon the expertise of the Client Service teams in all the OSS locations across the country, we will be implementing changes to our existing telephone system. We are currently working on updating the greeting that you hear when you call us to incorporate options to reach the Client Services teams that are providing legacy support for RLISYS, Delta Add-Power, and COS software. Part of our plan, as we move forward, is to implement changes that will enable the phone system to open earlier in the morning to accommodate callers from the Eastern and Central time zones. 