Month: February 2019

Service Spotlight

Susie Nippert has had a long and valued history of service on our clinic staff for over 30 years. Her kindness and caring are reflective of our clinic mission to provide unparalleled patient care and customer service. Last month Susie exemplified her commitment to make a difference on behalf of a patient in need. After receiving a call from a nurse at The James seeking assistance for an admitted patient whose temple had broken, Susie sprang to action. She walked to The James to pick up the glasses, brought them back to the Eyewear Gallery, and commandeered an optician to look through our inventory of spare parts to find a suitable replacement temple. The return trip to The James not only delivered a fully repaired pair of glasses, it also delivered a huge improvement to the quality of life of the patient.

I’m happy to announce that Susie’s retirement celebration will be held on Friday, March 22 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in Fry 658 in advance of her last day the following Friday, March 29. Please join the college in our thanks to Susie for her years of service. We are excited for the adventures that await Susie in her well-earned retirement.

Make a service spotlight nomination

Have you witnessed a staff member displaying an exceptional effort to go above and beyond to serve a patient? If so, nominate them for the next edition’s “Service Spotlight.” Send your nomination to Dr. Nixon at Nixon.24@osu.edu.

University Years of Service

Congratulations! Kudos! HIP HIP HOORAY! The following clinic staff and faculty have reached a new milestone at the University! Congratulations on your years of service and THANK YOU for all you do!

January:

  • Dr. Roanne Flom – 24 years
  • Shawn Curtner – 19 years
  • Eva Welch – 2 years

February:

  • Lauren Mayberry – 6 years
  • Shelley McGowan – 1 year

Julie Pickens – 1 year

Training Tip

The Patient Referral Taskforce (Shawn Curtner, Cathy Beatty, and Ashley Hill) has finalized the new process of electronically tracking the status of all incoming patient referrals. Jason Sentivany has programed customized fields and queries within Compulink to help facilitate this goal. The new process was presented at the last clinic staff meeting on January 28. The taskforce is now in the process of testing the new system prior to launching it. The launch date will be announced via email once testing has been completed.

In the meantime, please familiarize yourselves with the new process prior to the launch. A new patient referral tracking job aid has been posted in the clinic resources folder on clinic desktops. As we begin this new process, please reach out to one of the taskforce members if you notice any issues, glitches, or complications. With all new processes there are growing pains, needs for improvement, and changes to work out the kinks. We look forward to the implementation of this new process that will help streamline and make our processes more efficient for all staff involved in this process.

News & Notes

  • As winter is coming to a close, so is the Eyewear Gallery’s winter sunglasses sale. Be sure to promote the 50% discount for plano sunwear to all your patients before the first day of spring, March 20.
  • It’s spring semester, which means our Opt II interns are seeing their first patients in clinic. During this semester, we provide the faculty, staff, and space to allow the OPT II interns to examine their friends and family members free of charge to help increase their patient encounters. Many students from outside Ohio aren’t always able to fill their schedules due to the inability of family to travel a long distance. If you or your family members would like to volunteer to be a patient for a complimentary OPT II exam, please e-mail Dr. Goedde, the OPT II clinic faculty of record at goedde.11@osu.edu. Since these are their initial encounters, it is preferred to avoid complex cases with difficult refractions, binocular vision disorders, or complicated ocular health conditions.
  • Statistics of Interest:
    • AOC has increased the number of appointments scheduled by 14.5% over the last four years. That is largest percentage increase of any existing main campus clinic.
    • The Upper Arlington clinic has already more than doubled the entire amount of patient encounters from last academic year. The success of the UA clinic has outpaced our projections. After just 1.5 years, it is already operating at the projections that most start up clinics reach after 3.5 years. Congratulations to Dr. Maszczak, Wanda Jo, and Lauren for representing OSU Optometry to a new demographic of patients.
  • Mark your calendars. As we welcome the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, we are launching the start of the clinic semester conversion plan. Starting this May, the OPT IV clinic rotations will change from four quarter rotations to three semester rotations. Now the OPT III and OPT IV interns will have the same dates* for each clinic rotation as follows:Summer Rotation:

    May 6, 2019 – Aug 23, 2019
    Autumn Rotation: Aug 26, 2019 – Jan 3, 2020
    Spring Rotation: OPT III Jan 6, 2020 – May 01, 2020
    OPT IV Jan 6, 2020 – April 24, 2020* (no clinic the week prior to graduation)

    Changes to the OPT III rotations will include the addition of rotating through Faith Mission, which will occur every afternoon and all day Tuesday and Thursday. AOC will also add a Tuesday afternoon clinic session. Changes to the OPT IV rotations will include the addition of a Monday morning session in CL and a Friday afternoon session in BVP. LVR rotations will change to morning sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, and afternoon sessions on Thursday.

  • To allow for proper maintenance and back-up procedures to run, please limit your time in Compulink to the hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., including weekends. If a larger project would limit weekend access beyond those hours, IT will send correspondence in advance.

Clinic building update: The floorplans for the new clinic building have been finalized and transferred from the design architect to the builders. The final plans ended up not having a basement, so the optometry clinic will inhabit the first three floors of the building while the top three floors will house offices for medical school and hospital faculty and staff. The new plans will provide great visibility of the clinic to increase awareness of the great resource for quality eyecare faculty, staff, and students have in the heart of the medical campus. We hope to see some activity at the corner of 11th and Neil soon in anticipation of an autumn 2020 completion date.