The concept of lifestyle dispensing in eye care practices is not new. It is a tactic you can use to identify a patient's occupational and visual needs, and then offer the best options and materials to meet those needs. Most eye care professionals will agree these techniques can help boost sales and profits while delivering real lens benefits. Lifestyle dispensing helps to build patient loyalty too.
As an eye care professional, it is important to consider a variety of factors when recommending the right contact lens to your patients. Asking your patient questions such as whether or not he or she has an active lifestyle, works long hours, or even considering a patient’s age are all part of the contact lens selection process.
Your patients may want to become more involved in the process as well. So how do you take all of these factors into consideration and relay that information clearly to your patients? Here are some lifestyle questions that can help:
Does your patient have special needs?
First, make sure that you tell your eye care patients about their special needs. Does your patient have astigmatism? Is your patient a candidate for multifocal lenses? Since these special needs require special lenses such as toric lenses or multifocal lenses, having your patient understand what their needs are will help you guide them to the right contact lenses. CooperVision has a great YouTube channel resource that can help your patients learn more about astigmatism, presbyopia, and multifocal lenses if they want to learn more about their special needs.
What are your patient’s lifestyle habits?
Learning about how your patient spends a typical day, how long your patient expects to wear contact lenses through the course of the day, or even lifestyle activities can help you recommend a contact lens that is a good fit for your patient. For example, if you learn that a patient may occasionally sleep with his or her contact lenses in, then your recommendation may differ from a patient who will remove the lenses daily before bed. Once your patient has had his or her eye exam, having your patient take this Find A Lens quiz can also help with the contact lens selection process.