A double win for Tompkins Knight and Son Optometrists (TK&S) made for a startled dog when cheering started and champagne bottles were popped at a small, socially distanced gathering of practice directors watching the online ceremony in December.
Talking to Optician about its Contact Lens Practice of the Year win, Brian Tompkins, optometrist and director at TK&S, says the team would have been disappointed had they not won.
‘We put a lot of effort into our offering. We are able to offer things that, at this moment in time, no one else in Europe can do. We have an unlimited portfolio of every lens capable and so nothing is unavailable to us or too much trouble for us to manage,’ he says.
Tompkins spent time that evening congratulating fellow winners on social media and adds that anything that puts a smile on people’s face at the moment is a good thing.
He says: ‘The accolade is a pat on the back for all the hard work that goes into things like social media, contact lenses, spectacle dispensing and it’s a tick box for you in marketing, as well as professional development. It makes the whole team feel good, the team needs to be behind you and you need to be behind the team right now.’
At the time of applying for the Optician Awards, 24% of the practice’s patients were contact lens wearers and it had added 399 new patients in a year, 75 of which were contact lens patients.
In non-Covid times, its dedicated contact lens support team would not compromise on time spent with patients, with fitting appointments starting at one hour and taking as long as three hours for complex cases.
Now, Tompkins says, the practice is utilising all of its available tools to make appointments, quick and efficient while maintaining comfort and clarity for patients. ‘We were Technology Practice of the Year before and we utilise all the available leading technologies to enable lens fitting to be efficient.’
He adds that TK&S is the only European practice that currently provides EyePrint Prosthetics and ScanFit Prosthetics, which is a bespoke, made to measure, scleral lens for specialist cases such as dry eye or keratoconus.
With such a high standard of contact lens services offered, a huge amount of training and professional development is carried out by the practice team, which aids patient retention for the practice and improves drop-out rates.
‘They keep coming back. Some of the patients have been with me for over 40 years. They trust what we do and how we do it. With the particular offerings we have at the moment, we are getting patients from social media. Somebody flew over from Perth (Scotland), a
nine-hour journey, to get to us,’ Tompkins says.
TK&S manages patient expectations before they have even visited the practice, he explains: ‘We’ve got a full explanation of costings and the process of what we need to do. The expectation management is far more efficiently done prior to them actually arriving in the practice because by then it’s sometimes too late. They come knowing that we will have every aspect of what their concerns are covered because we’ll have discussed it fully before they arrive.’
Tompkins adds that in order to ensure success with contact lenses, he simply keeps it about comfort and clarity. ‘Many patients drop out because of comfort, but they were not pre-managed on dry eye. We’ll do dry eye questionnaires and dry eye tear analysis before any contact lens patients gets the lens in the eye because then they can’t blame the lens.
‘If you pre-manage the patient to be in the best condition to accept whatever glorious lens you’re doing, either super clever polymer daily disposables or super specialist custom fit lenses with the most advanced current coatings, you will be successful,’ he concludes.
Can your practice win contact lens practice of the Year 2021?
Exciting, vibrant practices employing innovative ideas that enthuse and engage patients in contact lens wear are the focus of this award. Our panel of judges will be looking for evidence of the strategies involved in promoting contact lens wear to a wide range of patients. The panel will want to see how lens selection is made to maximise comfort and vision, strategies for reducing drop outs should also be explained. The winner of this category will show creativity in communicating and promoting lenses to patients and growth in their contact lens business. This award is looking for new approaches, new talent and, potentially, younger practices who are growing their contact lenses from a modest base. The winner may be operating in the independent or corporate sector and will be promoting the widest array of lenses to the broadest spectrum of patients. To register you interest for the 2021 Optician Awards go to www.opticianawards.co.uk/register-your-interest-for-opt21.