How Rethinking Your Patient Interaction Can Influence Change and Improve Your Practice with Dr. Steve Vargo, OD

Hello, and welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today’s show is Dr. Steve Vargo, OD. Steve has had a storied career in optometry, starting out as a clinician after graduating from ICO in 1998. His interest for business led him to earn his MBA and eventually land at IDOC in the role of a practice management consultant. Having had over 3,000 consultative conversations over the years, he’s realized what every OD needs to know: we all have largely the same playing field. The difference, however, is in the execution of ideas and strategies, and it was in his curiosity of execution that led Steve to author a number of books, including his most recent one titled Prescribing Change: How to Make Connections, Influence, Decisions, and Get Patients to Buy Into Change.

Steve joins me on the show to talk about what he’s learned in researching and writing his book on how to influence change at the patient level. We talk about how you first need to understand the patient’s problems and not necessarily just jump into making clinical diagnosis based off data collected. We talk about how to transition from a “versus” to a “team” approach in the decision making process, the different levels of the brain that are involved when we make decisions, ways in which doctors can influence and build trust with their patients, and the importance of understanding something called “motivational interviewing.” It was a very enjoyable conversation and I learned some things as well that I’ll be looking at in my own firm!

As a reminder, you can get all the information discussed in today’s conversation by visiting our website at integratedpwm.com and clicking on the Learning Center. While there, you can also set up a 20-30min Discovery conversation to learn a little bit more about how we serve ODs around the country & what it means to work with our firm or check out any number of additional free resources like our eBooks and on-demand webinars.

And with that introduction, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Steve Vargo, OD.

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