Preview of Collaborative Care Symposium 2025 with Steven Greenstein, MD

Video Transcript:

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

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

Hi everyone. I'm here with Dr Steven Greenstein, one of the cochairs of the Collaborative Care Symposium, and he's going to tell us a little bit about the meeting, which offers CE and some practical pearls on all aspects of refractive surgery. So thanks for being here, I really appreciate it.

Steven Goldstein, MD:

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

So yeah, we're really excited to continue the Collaborative Care Symposium, which we started in 2021 and has continued each year now, in partnership with MJH. One of the great things about the symposium is that we really work on the combination of ophthalmology and optometry, the cutting edge technologies that exist for refractive surgery, and even some glaucoma and retina care, and how that affects refractive surgery, and where both the ophthalmologist role and the optometrist role fit in this. We have particularly some highlights where we talk about some of the law related to the ophthalmology and optometry relationship. So we have expert lawyers who come on and discuss updates in that different symposium on patient experience through refractive surgery, both in the optometry and ophthalmology setting. So it's really a unique chance of learning both clinical information, but also really practical information for your practice that you can implement immediately.

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

Absolutely, and I think it's super cool that you guys balance the conversation between optometry and ophthalmology and bringing in all of the legal aspects of it, because that's always changing.

Steven Goldstein, MD:

So that's always the thing that I think is front and center on a lot of people's minds. There has been a definite changing landscape over the last few years. So really, 1 of the highlights tends to be the expertise from our invited law team to discuss those topics.

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

Absolutely and you kind of gave me a little bit of preview on that. But are there any other topics that you're discussing or conversations that you're planning to have that you're really, really excited about?

Steven Goldstein, MD:

So I think every year it's exciting to really explore the unique nature of the refractive surgery space. It is a unique place where ophthalmology and optometry can work together to treat our patients. And so we always look forward to the topics which discuss some of the new and cutting edge changes in refractive surgery, in refractive cataract surgery, and even in MIGS and glaucoma management in refractive surgery patients. So these are things that really come up on a day to day basis, and can, like I said, be implemented on day 1.

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

Collaborative care is in the name of the meeting. So what do we gain as ECPs when we learn together?

Steven Goldstein, MD:

That's the great part of this meeting is that each lecture usually has an ophthalmologist and an optometrist doing them together, so you canget into the minds of both in 1 topic. You can really see how each side thinks about their patients. And then it helps, really in real time, see how you can bridge that thought process between the 2 fields. So you're watching that relationship in real time happening through each lecture, which I think really mimics the clinical world. I think that's how we really work nowadays. And there are multiple ways that ophthalmologists and optometrists interact, and that's 1 of the nice things on this meeting. We have different ways that comanagement happens. We have some people who are going to speak about more traditional comanagement, where patients are being sent in for surgery to the ophthalmologist and sent back to their optometrist for post op care, and they're happening in 2 separate places, other places where it's all sort of happening under one roof, but with the same kind of distribution of care, and in certain circumstances, like Dr [John]Gelles and myself, where we have real partnership that we complement each other in the same care: for example, our keratoconus patients.

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

You mentioned that you and Dr John Gelles helped found this meeting in 2021. Do you mind just telling me what about the Collaborative Care Symposium you are proudest of?

Steven Goldstein, MD:

So I think it really reflects the relationship that Dr Gelles and I have created over the years. So I think 1 of the things that we felt internally in our practice was that our relationship, clinically, really complements one another. So we felt that we manage our keratoconus patients best because of the fact that we're actually working together. We do separate parts of the management, but we're doing them to complement one another for each patient. And 1 of the things we felt that was lacking and sometimes harder to see was even though we knew was out there – we knew that that same complement existed across the refractive surgery space – it wasn't being really talked about enough. It wasn't really being something that you would see happen in a meeting. Most meetings were really relegated to 1 side or the other. And so we felt that, because of our own experience, we wanted to try to see whether we could bring that to real life through a virtual forum, and it's really only taken off from there. It's only gotten better and better with more diverse lectures as the years have gone on, and more diverse topics to continue to grow the meeting.

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

Fantastic. And is there anything else that you want to mention about the meeting that I haven't asked you about?

Steven Goldstein, MD:

I think the key feature of the meeting is really the practical take home messages that are conveyed in this meeting. I think the meeting is really geared for doctors, both in optometry and ophthalmology, that want to learn about both practical clinical things to be implementing for comanagement and also administrative, law, and business, all kind of combined in 1.

Emily Kaiser Maharjan:

Absolutely. Well thanks again for being here, Dr Greenstein. It's been a pleasure, and I really appreciate it.

Steven Goldstein, MD:

Alright, thank you very much.