The Meeker Minute
With Dr. Ron Meeker
Opportunities in the Return to Normal
It seems like it took forever to get here, but we’ve finally reached the point where most areas of the country have lifted nearly all COVID restrictions....
First Impression Fallout: Booking New Patients
I recently moved from New York to Florida. Prior to this move, my primary residence had been in the same town for my entire life with the exception of...
Up Your Hiring Game With Job Shadowing
With the labor market tighter than ever before, it’s critical to find and keep the best candidates for open positions in your business. One of the keys to...
Why Purchasing a Building was Among My Top Business Decisions
About 15 years into practice, I was at a crossroads. My senior partner had been retired for a few years. I was a solo practitioner working long hours and...
Is Buying a Building the Right Choice for You?
Turning Points: Purchasing a Building - Part 3 With the current COVID-induced downturn in commercial real estate in addition to low interest rates, it may...
Purchase or Lease Your Space? The Downside of Buying
Turning Points: Buying a Building - Part 2 This week, we're continuing a discussion about the pros and cons of purchasing a building for your practice. Of...
4 Reasons You Should Consider Buying a Building for Your Practice
Turning Points: Purchasing a Building - Part One For most of us, there are at least a couple of major decisions which have a profound impact on our...
Mission Critical: Why Are You in Business?
Can you describe why your business exists, your business goals and philosophies, in a sentence or two? It’s not an easy task to define a mission statement,...
Deepen Your Talent Pool and Improve Your Team
What sets your practice apart from the others in your area? It’s a question any successful business owner has to reckon with. No matter the aesthetics of...
Raise Your New Patient Percentage: Make New Patients Feel Truly Welcome
How does your practice rate when it comes to first impressions? If your new patient percentage is lower than you’d like, perhaps it’s time to take a...
What’s Your “Man Down” Plan?
Similar to penalty play in lacrosse or hockey, you need to have a strategy for dealing with being a team member short. Your staff members get sick from...
Can One Patient Really Be Worth $25k?
As health care providers, we are in a service industry. We also have a retail component to our business. As such, the patient experience is a...
How to Use the Psychology of Change to Improve Performance in Your Practice
The old saying “change is the only constant” seems to become more relevant every year. Whether so much change is considered good or bad is at least...
Four Free Things You Can Do to Reduce Staff Turnover
Ask 10 practice owners what they like least about their job and 9 of them will say something related to human resources. With an average staff...
Checking Out: The Perfect Ending Improves Collections Per Hour
Over the past four weeks, we've discussed almost every area of the practice, and how each person can directly impact one of my favorite KPIs, Collections...
Improving Your Collections Per Hour in the Optical
We've spent 3 weeks looking at different angles to improve Collections Per Hour - one of my top KPIs. So far, we've looked at how everyone in the practice...
Lead Your Team to Profitability by Improving Provider Efficiency
For the past 2 weeks, we've been discussing Collections Per Hour and how different members of your team can contribute to this critical KPI. In part 3...
Your Technicians Can Help Improve Collections Per Hour
Last week, we started a conversation about Collections Per Hour, often broken down into Collections Per OD Hour and Collections per Staff Hour, which is...
Grow Your Revenue With Smart Scheduling
Begin improving your Collections Per Hour with a solid schedule. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are critical tools for evaluating the performance of...
Increase Your Capture Rate with a 100% SERVICE Rate
As important as Capture Rate is to your business, the term “capture” carries a connotation that sometimes is counterproductive to long-term...
Build Leadership and Improve Efficiency by Delegating
As practices grow, most reach a point where there are many employees to manage, yet a full-time practice manager is hard to justify. Juggling personnel...
Grow Your Practice with 1 Simple Question
Everybody wants to be efficient in your scheduling. As you delegate tasks and become more efficient, make sure that your communication with patients...
When is an Emergency Really an Emergency?
It’s 4:30 and your staff informs you that an emergency visit has been added to your schedule. Sound familiar? When it turns out to be a retinal...
What’s Better Than a Raise?
Every employee likes to be recognized and know that excellent performance can lead to additional rewards. Often, this comes in the form of a raise in...
4 Tips to Keep Your Practice Running on Schedule
Let’s face it - time is fast becoming THE most important commodity. Experiences are now valued above possessions for most of the younger generation....
About The Meeker Minute
You can change your practice for the better – one minute at a time. While “big initiatives” are always important to consider, oftentimes the real change happens in small moments, just a minute or two, as you implement sustainable, healthy habits that improve your practice in manageable, bite-size increments.
The Meeker Minute is a collection of quick wins that anybody can put into play. Build a better team, serve your patients better, and enjoy better business performance – one minute at a time..
About Ron Meeker
Dr. Meeker has been in practice in his home town of Vestal, NY since 1985. He is a graduate of Colgate University and the University of California at Berkeley School of Optometry. He has been a Fellow of the American Academy since 1988 and was among the first group of optometrists to achieve Diplomate of the American Board of Optometry in 2011. Dr. Meeker was an early adopter of electronic health records, beginning in 1997.
After 35 years in active practice, Dr. Meeker is transitioning his legacy practice to a younger practitioner as he turns his attention to the next phase of his career. He looks forward to sharing his expertise with the eyeTHRIVE community, and assisting other practitioners in developing their best practices.
