Carolyn Helbert-Green, OD, of Colleyville Vision Associates, says that with her Marco TRS systems, she is able to spend more time on patient education, counseling and follow-up—activities she considers central to high-quality care. For a clinician with roughly 37 years in practice and 23 years at her current private practice, that extra face-to-face time is not a luxury; it is the defining feature of how she wants to provide care.
Dr. Helbert-Green says technology forms one of the practice’s core pillars. With a Marco TRS automated refraction system in each of the practice’s seven exam lanes, and an OPD-Scan III in the pretesting area, she can maintain consistency across the patient experience. The OPD-Scan III combines an autorefractor, keratometer, pupillometer corneal topographer and integrated wavefront aberrometer.
About three years ago, Dr. Helbert-Green finished the construction of her “dream office,” a new, highly sustainable and energy-efficient building. The larger footprint allowed for seven exam lanes where she previously had three. She brought over her three existing TRS systems and decided to continue adding four more. “It’s very important to me that every room is identical with equipment and standardized,” she says. She does have two manual phoropters that she sometimes uses for children or others.
The uniform exam lane setups mean that she or her associate doctor can walk in, review pretest data and move through the exam process without significant adjustments based on the room.
Dr. Helbert-Green completes the automated refraction process herself. Not only does that provide her with the data she needs to make her clinical judgment, but she also uses the time to educate patients. Because the automated refraction process is fast and reliable, she can spend more of her exam minutes explaining findings, showing images and counseling patients on ocular health. Each exam lane includes dual monitors, which Dr. Helbert-Green uses to display topographies, anterior segment photos and year-over-year comparisons.
Being able to show a patient, in real time, how topography has changed or what astigmatism looks like often leads to a clearer understanding and stronger adherence to treatment or follow-up recommendations. “These images and scans help me explain so patients understand and follow through,” she says. As the practice grows its specialty contact lens and myopia management business, the variety of high-technology instruments is crucial.
EVIDENCE BEFORE THEIR EYES
A practical advantage with the Marco TRS is that she uses the side-by-side comparison capability. She can present a patient’s current eyeglasses prescription, ready by her Marco lensmeter, next to a proposed new prescription. Then patients can decide whether there’s enough of a difference to go select new eyewear.
“It’s not a sales pitch,” she says. “It’s facts. They can see which is better.” This evidence-based presentation reduces uncertainty for patients and keeps Dr. Helbert-Greene from trying to determine whether a small change is functionally better.
Reliability and vendor partnership are equally important.
She praises Marco’s local representative and customer service for being responsive and collaborative during planning and installation, even to the point of helping her determine electrical power placement, cable management and optimal room layout to ensure the equipment fit smoothly into the clinical environment. .
With time saved on routine tasks, she and her associate continue to explore more ways to reduce clerical burden—such as AI-assisted note capture. “I want to spend my time with patients, not doing charting,” she says. The patient response reinforces the approach.
Longtime patients often ask what new tool the practice has acquired. New patients regularly express a “wow” reaction to the integrated testing and the practice’s polished presentation. Dr. Helbert-Green says that reaction is welcome, but the true measure is being able to deliver care that feels thorough, efficient and understandable to patients.
In her view, Marco’s TRS systems and associated instruments enable a practice model that is both technologically advanced and intensely patient-centered—delivering objective data while leaving clinicians more time to listen, teach and guide.
Read more about advanced technology from Marco Lombart and WO here.
