Before we even moved out to Elkton I had Nancy start calling all the over-due patients. This was a great thing because before I even opened I had around 15 people on the books for the first couple of weeks.
We got here on the 4th or 5th of August, I started cleaning up and getting things arranged how I wanted it and on the 10th I started seeing my first patients. At that point I wasn't taking any insurance. I was in the process of getting on Medicare, but I knew that wasn't going to be ready for another month or so. So, even though I was seeing 2-5 people a day that first month almost all of them were medicare patients. Luckily, almost every person I saw needed glasses and chose to purchase them at my practice! That and the fact that we had very few expenses accounted for a pretty good first month, which resulted in a lot of optimism for the coming months.
Ruth and Lois painted the new waiting room (which was Dr. Downey's old exam room). We got a lot of the new furniture at Ikea, the two gray chairs came from West Elm, and the rest just came from around Dr. Downey's building. We thought it turned out really well.
September wasn't too bad, but not as good as August, mainly because we now had bills to pay. Dr. Downey was very kind and allowed us to use his office for free with no commitment on our part for the first three months! That helped a lot!
The auto-refractor that Dr. Downey had in his office died around the first of October. So ever since it's been all retinoscopy. I have to say, in lots of ways it's faster to do that than sit them down in some other room and have somebody else do an auto refraction.
Towards the end of September and going into October the patients noticeably slowed down. By mid October I was really getting ready to find a new (more updated) location that was on a first floor. It was frustrating having patients call and say "are you still up all those stairs?"...or...people would call and say "I just walked in the door and saw all those stairs and I'll have to cancel my apt." Anyway, I'm sure I could have stuck it out and stayed in that 2nd floor office, but getting in a different location seems like a better option all around.
By the end of October I had 2 or 3 options and all were pretty good. We eventually decided with this place:
There is a local guy that does car detailing for his business but does signs on the side. I had him make me 3 signs (one on each side of the building and one to put on that white banister in front of the white door). He gave me a great deal and even threw in a free sign or plaque for my front door. We moved the first week in November.
October inspired me to look for a part-time job. I was blessed to find one so quickly. I go down to Waynesboro to work at the Walmart vision center Wednesday afternoons (1-6) and Saturday's (9-3). It is a good 45-50 minute drive, but they basically let me set those hours and they pay me fairly well.
I really like our new location but now we're paying rent, utilities are more (gas furnace as apposed to space heaters) and pt numbers are even lower.....and we didn't break even for the first time since opening. By the second week in December I think we were at an all-time low for patient numbers.
I was told that December would be bad, so I counted on that, but the last two weeks of December were my best ones since opening! Since then it has stayed pretty steady and even increased some the last week in Jan and first week in Feb of this year!
In October and November I was lucky to see 8-10 patients a week! The last week in Jan I saw 18! The first week in Feb I saw 15 in only 3 days (since we took Thursday and Friday off to go up to the temple and see Ruth's sister Lois).
In Nov we started paying for Dr. Downey's equipment and frame inventory (plus some odds and ends - mostly furniture). Our contract says we have 3 years to pay it off. With the help of our Walmart job and and our tax return we hope to pay it off a lot sooner than that.
Some little tid-bits:
I noticed that my Verizon bill was higher than I thought it should be. I was looking it over and there was something on there for $49 a month that I didn't understand. I called them up and they said "Yes, that is supposed to be free for the first 6 months and then you can cancel it." I told them I had never heard of it and that I wanted them to cancel it and refund me all the past months they had charged me. They said they would and they looked into it and there was another thing (like around $20/month) that they had been charging me that they weren't supposed to that they took off as well. So, that was nice to get that bill cut down a little bit.
I got my first medicare check in mid October. I moved the first week in November. The checks were being direct deposited into my bank account regularly after that. Then mid December they just stopped and didn't start again until the end of January just because I had moved and it took them that long to "update my address" in their system even though my bank account didn't change!! Oh well.
I've changed my fee schedule a couple of times since we opened and in lots of ways it's been good that we weren't totally busy from the beginning. It's going to take a while to get things running as smoothly as possible.
Stay tuned for the following:
1. Elkton Eyecare paying its doctor his first check.
2. Elkton Eyecare paying off Dr. Downey.
3. Elkton Eyecare getting an Eletronic Medical Record.
