EDITOR’S PAGE

You Gotta Wear Shades

If you think private, solo practice is as relevant as dinosaur wash or Edsel parts, go onto something else, please. This month we’re celebrating the new wave of private practitioners.

In our cover stories we focus on solo docs who’ve started practices in the past decade. We want to show that it can be done today and that these doctors have something to teach all of us. Here are three lessons I learned from these inspiring souls:

1. Starting a practice is gut-busting work. Here are words from three optometrists who know. Kenneth Maller: “In the first year, there was no week I worked less than 90 hours.” Pamela Ellis, who worked at a nearby military installation as she got her own practice up and running: “It was exhausting …” And, H. Clif Gregory, the focus of the first installment in our yearlong “Practice Profile” series (page 60): “You know there’s a lot of stress involved. I’m going to go broke, and I’m going to stave to death—all these things are running through your mind—and you keep sticking it out and keep sticking it out.”

It’s refreshing to see a new generation carry on the spirit of independent practice. Perhaps that’s why private-practice optometry continues to thrive; the type of people the profession attracts have the heart and soul to make it that way.

2. Play hardball with third-party payers. These doctors are picky about what insurance plans they participate in. If the plans don’t measure up, these doctors don’t sign up. Nobody says it better than Dr. Gregory: “I’ll work for free for a person, for a cause that I care for, but I won’t work for free for an insurance company.” Those insurance company hacks who nickel and dime you on claims won’t do their jobs for free. Why should you?

3. Optometry needs a thriving independent sector. This I picked up reading between the lines. There are two reasons for this: independent doctors have been the leaders—mostly through the AOA and state associations—who have championed expanded scope of practice and parity with medical doctors; and it forces clinics, chains and other doctors who employ O.D.s to pay fair compensation. After all, they must pay enough to keep their doctors away from independent practice.
At times we might think that the days of the independent practitioner are numbered, though our own research shows otherwise. About 52 percent of O.D.s are in solo practice and 30 percent in partnerships. Sometimes, though, it’s like the old Timbuk 3 song: The future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades.

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