Part 6: Ask the Experts: What problem in ophthalmology do you wish there was a solution for?

This series features experts in ophthalmology sharing their thoughts on the one unsolved challenge they wish there was a solution for.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Fatemah Rajaii, MD, PhD:

I think it would be awesome if we had a way to identify patients once they develop or have onset of thyroid eye disease, develop people who are going to end up having severe disease, so we would know really to focus on those patients in terms of our more urgent interventions and keeping a closer eye on them. Currently, we don't really know who will get better, who will get worse, who's going to have the worst disease, and whose disease will sort of normalize long term. And if we had that kind of tool, I think it would really help in terms of risk stratification and really knowing who needs a lot of these emerging therapies.

Alexander Fein, MD:

Again, I'm a neurologist, but I will say one thing that would be nice to have a solution to is to be able to read a patient's mind and understand what symptoms they're actually describing.

Kamran Riaz, MD:

So the one thing that I wish there was a solution for, an answer to, and I say this a little bit tongue in cheek, is sort of the decreasing reimbursements that we're getting while being asked to provide more and more care for patients that we treat. I think all of us are blessed. No one is struggling to put food on the table, but it can be very frustrating and challenging that we're asked to sort of take on more patients, more EMR type of stuff, more check all the boxes, more stuff that we do, sometimes outside of patient care. And so I wish that at least our reimbursements were commensurate with the rising cost of living and inflation. And I think that would, I think, prevent some burnout. I think it also would prevent perhaps unethical practices done in ophthalmology, where perhaps some clinicians may feel pressure to, you know, charge patients for things in order to just keep the lights on. And I sympathize, and I get with that. So I think if we, if we had a metric to be able to, you know, reward physicians for doing just good, honest, ethical work, I think we'd be able to still take care of more patients and enjoy what we do. So that's my pipe dream, my fantasy of hopefully that if we were be able to be commensurately paid more for what we do, I think that would certainly go a long ways.