Chris Bennett: Clinical care is the key to patients and profit but how do you get there

Last weekend's British Contact Lens Association conference in Birmingham fulfilled its usual role as an international symposium offering the latest clinical thinking on contact lens and the anterior eye (News).

There's been something of a changing of the guard at the BCLA of late, that could certainly be detected in the amount of business talk on offer. Despite the clinical credentials of visitors there was no shortage of interest in these more commercial lectures, in which, speakers showed a remarkable level of unanimity in how patients can be retained.

There are some simple facts. Patients who have a good clinical relationship with a practice are less likely to leave. Patients who are looked after well and offered the latest products are less likely to drop out. The more often a patient visits a practice the more likely they are to be loyal. Contact lens patients are worth more to a practice than spectacle wearers alone. Direct debits tend not to be cancelled, Patient Management Plans allow for  peaks and troughs in income to be ironed out, professional fees to be separated from product cost. So why aren't all practices following the template?