Archive for April, 2010

A Recent Rash of Lens Remakes on External Prescriptions Underscores the “Art” portion of Vision Correction.  Learn The Steps We Are Taking to Ensure Your Outside Prescription Is Accurate.

Lens remakes are the bane of any optometrist’s existence.

Not only are they costly for both the practice and the labs, but they also create frustration with patients and clients who may have to endure one or more lens remakes before they are actually able to see clearly.

No one wants them and every optician and optometrist works hard up-front to avoid them.

However, they do happen every now and then.

Why?

Well, unfortunately, sometimes a lab will make a mistake and get the script wrong.

Sometimes what a patient thought was “clear vision” during the exam isn’t so “clear” when they actually put the finished glasses on.

Other times, we just need to “tweak” a prescription and lens a few times, especially for new progressive wearers or people with complex vision correction needs like prism.

In very rare instances, a person’s vision may literally change between the refraction and the delivery of the finished frame and lenses.

Our Philosophy: We Work Until We Get Your Lenses Right. Period.

In all of these cases, we continue to work with the patient until we get the finished product right, and often we do this at considerable extra cost to Urban Optiques – both in additional lab rework fees and the staff’s time.  It’s just part of the process of providing good vision care and an accepted cost of business for us (even though we want to minimize it.)

The good news is that when we actually perform the eye exam and refraction at Urban Optiques, we have an extremely low remake rate. There are few specific reasons for this, which I’ll touch on a bit later.

But first, let me tell you about a recent “mystery” at Urban Optiques around remakes.

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• Today's UV Index for Detroit Michigan: 6 (High) Keep those sunglasses on! http://oaspub.epa.gov/enviro/uv_search #health #optical #eyes #
• Are Women More Prone to Vision Loss? http://bit.ly/9goGms #optical #health #eyes #vision #
• Five Proven Ways to Grow Your Optical Practice Using the Internet: bit.ly/aiW73J #optical #optometry #business #marketing #
• Congrats to the New Mayor of Urban Optiques on FourSquare! Harry from Ann Arbor: http://bit.ly/9GQzmY #foursquare #
• Urban Optiques FourSquare Special: 10% off frames/suns when you show your check-in, Mayor get's 15% off! #foursquare #optical #sunglasses #
• More new Chloe sunglasses arrive! HAVE to stop in to see them … #sunglasses #
• @EyewearExpo Thanks for the compliment and nice RT. The Sunglasses Mag article was so much fun to do! #sunglasses #
• Check out Urban Optiques' "Sunglasses" App on Facebook! Send gorgeous designer sunglasses to your friends: http://bit.ly/dcgQom #sunglasses #

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We’re Open Earlier and Later Now On Select Days!

To take advantage of the longer Spring and Summer days, we’ve made some tweaks to our retail hours at Urban Optiques over the past week.

While we’ve always accepted appointments outside of our posted retail store hours, we decided to switch our official hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays to offer people more options in terms of both scheduling and walk-ins.

Here’s what’s new:

• Wednesdays we are now open from 8 am to noon for early birds
• Thursdays we’ve extended our evening hours from 11 am to 7 pm for the after-work crowd

For now, Saturdays we are still officially open 10 am to 2 pm, although we are usually open later than that depending on what’s going on in Downtown Northville, our exam schedule, the weather, foot-traffic in town, etc.

We will likely extend Saturday hours once we get an idea of how the Wednesday and Thursday changes work out.

Looking forward to seeing all of you soon!

Do You Belong to Foursquare?  If So, You’re Gonna Love Our Perks for Foursquare Members!

If you are a regular user of Facebook, you may have noticed some of your friends posting “Check-ins” lately at local businesses using something called “Foursquare.“

So what is Foursquare and why would Urban Optiques care about it?

Foursquare is mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location.

Points are awarded for “checking in” at venues and users also earn badges by checking into locations with certain tags or at certain frequencies.  Even better, users can choose to have their Twitter and/or their Facebook accounts updated when they check in.

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Study Suggests Females Have Higher Rates of Eye Disease.  So What Can A Woman Do to Keep Her Vision Healthy?

You work-out and exercise, you eat healthy, your have regular check-ups with your OBGYN and primary physician, but are you also paying special attention to your vision?

Research suggests that you should be.

A 2008 study by Prevent Blindness America and the National Eye Institute consistently shows that more women are diagnosed with major eye diseases than men. Of the more than 3.6 million Americans age 40 or older who suffer from visual impairment, including blindness, 2.3 million are women.

This disturbing research prompted Prevent Blindness America to designate April as “Women’s Eye Care and Safety Month” in an effort to encourage women to make vision health a priority and schedule an eye exam that includes dilation.

Dry Eyes? You’re Not Alone Ladies

The study found that in addition to more diagnosed cases of major eye disease, women are more prone to dry eye syndrome, a condition where not enough natural tears are produced, or the composition of the tear layers is compromised.

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