Basil K. Williams Jr, MD:
Hello, I'm Basil Williams.

Esther L. Kim, MD:
I'm Esther Kim.

Basil K. Williams Jr, MD:
And we're here discussing the business of retina and advocacy panel. So Dr. Kim was the moderator for our session and we had a really interesting discussion talking about non-physicians for injections, talking about the 25 modifier, talking about the chronic disease fund, and talking about scribes, virtual and AI. If you can talk a little bit about the scribe discussion and what was most salient.

Esther L. Kim, MD:
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I thought that there was a lot of buzz and excitement, not only on the panel, but a lot of participation from audience members. There were a couple of people in the audience who were currently using virtual scribes. So somebody located in a different state, but scribing for them, but also AI scribes. The interesting point was that a lot of the AI scribes were now being integrated into the EMR. So that makes the transition really seamless. And then looking forward to even using that with practice management, I think will help to streamline a lot of things in the future.

It sounds like there is a lot of activity right now in sort of the internal medicine, ER space, not so much for ophthalmologists, but from what the comments were from in the audience, it does sound like there's a lot of works in the process and things that we can hopefully look forward to soon.

Basil K. Williams Jr, MD:
Absolutely. Definitely a space that we're going to be looking forward to hearing more information. So regarding the Chronic Disease Fund, we obviously know over the last couple of years it's been significantly underfunded and this has had an impact on our patient's ability to get injections, particularly with branded drugs. Can you talk a little bit about that conversation and what people are doing to try and navigate this difficulty?

Esther L. Kim, MD:
Yeah, absolutely. Good Days is ironic because now it's bad days and we know what a wrench it throws into our plans in clinic. Personally, I've had to switch patients to Avastin. Alternatively using samples of branded drugs for the patients who really need it, switching insurances if worse comes to worse or even just having to pay that 20% portion.

I think some good suggestions from the audience were to just have a short list of patients who really need the drug so that in that window of 24 hours or what have you, where the Good Days funds does become available, getting those people that really need the drug on the list into the good days right away is I think really a nice tip. Some people had a dedicated person in their practice that was on top of Good Days and looking into other local sources as well, and just kind of getting creative with different ways to work around with local funding for getting some of these drugs approved. But it has been an ongoing challenge and hopefully we'll be able to see more funding in the future.

Basil K. Williams Jr, MD:
Agreed completely. Well, thanks for running a fantastic session. And I think as you mentioned, there was really a lot of engagement and so it's exciting to see Vit-Buckle take on these really interesting and sometimes challenging topics. And we look forward to hearing more about the business of retina and advocacy in next year's meeting. Thank you.

Esther L. Kim, MD:
Sounds good. Thanks Basil.