My point is, you don't know until you try and your patient base is what you make of it. The day you stop whining about how organized optometry is failing to educate the public about the value of proper eyecare, and start educating your own patients, is the day you might find optometry is a very enjoyable and rewarding pursuit indeed.
This was an excellent presentation, basically: "Am I aggressively and actively building my practice or relying on VCP to bring patients to me?" I live in a town with one large employer, so dropping its VCP is not an option (recent change from VSP to Davis - that's another thread...)
My take-aways:
1. expand my private pay sales: services & goods. I wrote about this years ago:
https://www.reviewob.com/four-ways-to-add-direct-pay-products-services/
2. carry my business card everywhere & talk about what I do, everywhere I go. at the grocery store, in the pastry shop, at church, at political events, etc.
3. drop the worst VCP first: yeah, the one that keeps calling me about the balance that I owe for the services & goods rendered 4 months ago;
4. smart marketing, a very high level of care, patient-centered care, specialty services: all of the above.