20/20 Money Episode # 81 – The Benefits and Strategy to Adding Dry Eye Tx to Your Practice with Dr. Damon Dierker, OD

Hello, and welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today’s show is Dr. Damon Dierker.

Damon already has a very storied career in optometry, so I was excited to have him on today to talk about dry eye and I feel it’s important to give a bit of a backstory to help set the stage. Clinically, he is a partner and Director of Optometric Services at Eye Surgeons of Indiana, one of (if not the) top tertiary care/referral center in the state of Indiana. His areas of clinical expertise include advanced retinal disease including diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, and glaucoma as well as advanced ocular surface disease treatment. He is a frequent presenter of continuing education presentations to doctors across the country and is an adjunct faculty member of Indiana University’s School of Optometry and directs the clinical externship program at ESI. As if that wasn’t enough, he is also the President-Elect of the Indiana Optometric Association.

The reason that I wanted to have Damon on the show today is because he’s created a program that has helped many ODs around the country implement a dry eye treatment program in their practice. It’s no secret that treatment of dry eye is becoming a growing topic of concern—both from the patient’s and doctor’s perspective. It’s also an area that over time can boost revenue and thus profitability of a practice. However, implementing a dry eye program into an existing practice can seem daunting and something that ODs may put off until “they get around to it.”

In this conversation, Damon talks about how he came up with the idea of forming his Dry Eye Boot Camp program and how it evolved and grew into a passion project side business for him to help ODs implement dry eye tx into their practice. We cover all aspects of dry eye: the mindset shift that first must occur with the OD, the equipment and tech needed, the investment needed of both time and money, the potential ROI, a scheduling strategy to consistently grow dry eye in your practice, the standard of care for diagnosing and treating dry eye, and the various ways of marketing this additional service to both existing and new patients.

As a reminder, you can get all the information discussed in today’s conversation by visiting our website at integratedpwm.com and clicking on the Learning Center. While there, you can also set up a 20-30min Discovery conversation to learn a little bit more about what it means to work with our firm and how we serve ODs all over the country or check out any number of additional free resources like our eBooks and on-demand webinars.

And with that introduction, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Damon Dierker.