The Dryeye Rescue™ program is a turnkey solution designed to offer various levels of involvement so that each practice can tailor it to individual needs. The essential tools available help providers expand dry eye services by offering opportunities to:
The Dryeye Rescue™ Partner Program is designed to help practices create the proper environment to cultivate dry eye patients, ensure patient compliance, and create a new revenue stream through dry eye products—which can also help to increase in-office treatments.
The Dryeye Rescue™ Provider Program is designed to help eye doctors convert their practices into full service dry eye clinics. Fully personalized for each office, it is designed to drive more medical patients into a practice through external marketing, internal conversions, and local referrals.
Additionally, providers can order all of their favorite dry eye products from one source through the doctor-exclusive Dryeye Rescue™ wholesale website.
Meeting Individual Needs
Dr. Garlich said she incorporated Dryeye Rescue™ into her practice about six months ago and has been “super happy with it.”
Dennis referred to Garlich’s entry into Dryeye Rescue™ as a great example of being able to choose the level of involvement that was a good fit for her practice.
“When you signed on, you wanted to go step by step and you didn't want to go all in at once. It worked out perfectly getting through the holidays, getting staff on board, and now we're kinda rolling,” he said.
“If it's an office that's all in on dry eye, great. We plug right in. If they need a playbook and a little bit of help to get off the ground and get momentum going, but still want to do their own show, we’re great there, too.” Dennis explained. “And even for the specialists who have been doing this for ten years and are dialed in, we complement their systems. We make them even better than they already were.”
Increasing Treatment Conversions
When it comes to helping practices expand their dry eye services and increase treatment conversions, Dennis said they learned a lot by figuring out what didn’t work—which was to expect a practice that was new to dry eye to suddenly recommend an expensive treatment.
“They were not very comfortable going from zero to scheduling Mrs. Smith for a twelve or eight hundred dollar procedure,” he explained.
Noting that doctors with dry eye experience are typically comfortable recommending the more expensive treatments, Dennis said patients with moderate to severe disease are also usually more willing to agree to higher-end options.
“But that’s a small percentage of our overall patients,” he said. “We want to expand awareness to all the mild and moderate patients who are unaware of everything that's available.”
Dennis underscored that offering simple, at-home treatment options to help patients get started has been key to helping them buy into in-office treatments on subsequent visits.
In that context, in-office displays that demonstrate the variety of products available provide a bridge to treatment that helps everyone feel more comfortable—including office staff.
“The products and the marketing systems internally help take some of that selling out of the exam lane,” he explained. “The patients are more accustomed to getting a lot of different recommendations.”
He said this allows them to “dip a toe in the water” to try things out.
“That's a very soft sell,” Dennis said. “The doctor can then recommend a great protocol, a product to get them started.”
When patients return for their follow-up appointments and have experienced positive results, they often ask about the next step up in treatment.
“They really feel like they're going to get what they pay for. It’s made a big difference,” he said.
Providing Immediate Wholesale Website Access
Describing the various Dryeye Rescue™ offerings, Dennis said the vast array of products is something providers can access “right off the bat.”
“Easy access to three hundred products from sixty different companies, with one password,” he said.
And if a patient wants a favorite brand the doctor doesn’t typically use?
“You have a distributor you can pull from, and that keeps them on board. That wholesale site allows a doctor full access to the majority of what's out there and also a lot of flexibility regarding what they’d like to give each patient,” he said.
Fixing the Disconnect
Noting that Dryeye Rescue™ also offers other tools—such as internal marketing, product referral pads, discount cards, and more—Dennis said resources like these help to “fix the disconnect.”
“We saw a major disconnect in our own offices,” he explained. “We were getting really good at selling the first order on site and getting the second order. But two months down the road, we were not doing so great.”
In an effort to make the reordering process as easy as possible for patients, Dryeye Rescue™ provides free product referral pads with detailed information tailored to each practice.
Garlich said having the customized pad on which she can circle her recommendations and provide simple ordering guidance is what she likes the most.
“It’s the easiest conversion, it does not feel like I'm selling to the patient at all,” she said.
Dennis agreed and noted that when patients decide to subscribe for regular orders, the process becomes easier still—especially because providers can track patient compliance by viewing their orders through the provider’s portal.
Plus, he said patients notice when providers go the extra mile to make things easier for them.
“You're just saying, listen, there are a lot of things I want you to have. So we went out of our way to partner with Dryeye Rescue™ so you could have access to a great site with discount codes that never expire and free shipping,” he said. “That really does go a long way with the patients.”
Capturing Online Sales (Affiliate Program)
The second aspect of “fixing the disconnect” is that it allows offices to capture online sales without expensive ecommerce websites. In addition to helping improve patient compliance, doctors can simply refer patients to DryEyeRescue.com and get credit from their online purchases.
“We provide custom links and promo codes to ensure online orders get credited to doctors and a dashboard where they can track and see all conversions,” Dennis said.
Dry Eye Doctor Locator
Another huge benefit of the DryEye Rescue™ program is the doctor locator designed to help patients who don’t have an eye doctor find a local dry eye specialist.
“We’ve seen many cases of patients without a doctor shopping online for products and finding our website,” Dennis explained. “Next to each product they see a list of the four closest dry eye doctors in their area. This has been a great feature to drive new patients into offices that can truly help them get dry eye relief.”
In this way, they can be a “bridge” between those in need of specialty dry eye care and the offices committed to providing it.
“We want to showcase what you've invested,” he said. “The office that didn't invest in anything can still treat dry eye. But the patients who are coming to us are those who are looking to go above and beyond.”
Cultivating Dry Eye Awareness
In terms of “cultivating” dry eye awareness, Dennis said the aim is to create an environment that leads patients to initiate the conversation about dry eye disease.
“They're sitting in the chair and see all these products they’ve never seen in other offices—absolutely not displayed like this and to this degree,” he explained. “Then they see a little bit of marketing in the pre-test room and even one step further in the exam room with the small exam displays. Our goal is that that patient brings it up before you even mention it.”
Dennis recommended that providers interested in learning more about the Dryeye Rescue™ program visit dryeyerescuepro.com—which has comprehensive information for doctors, as well as links to the other sites.
This content was originally published here.