The Work When Patients Aren’t There

Often when I hold a conference with parents or patients to review a prescribed course of treatment, particularly when that involves office-based optometric vision therapy, I mention that alot of work goes on behind the scenes to position the patient to succeed.  If we do our jobs well, the patient has little inkling of what is discussed during staff meetings, the daily preparations, the checks and balances (literally and figuratively).  That is a common ingredient that drives the success of practices such as those who constitute vision help.

I have loved what I do for a living for nearly 40 years now, having graduated the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in 1977 with a loving wife, an emerging family, and ambitious plans for the future.  I have been blessed with talented people in my life who have facilitated what we’ve been able to accomplish, and a couple of years ago began to seriously consider the effective transfer of practice to new ownership.

On the medical side of healthcare practice one sees hospital or other corporate entities absorbing smaller businesses in the current marketplace.  With externally imposed constraints, personalized care becomes more of a slogan than a reality.  It was very important to Miriam and me to search for new owners who would grasp all of the work that goes on behind the scenes to render the type of care that we do, at the level at which we do it.  We have found two such individuals, and I’ll be sharing more of our collective experiences down the road.  Our immediate goal is to make the transition seamless to the point where the work behind the scenes remains invisible, and the outside world senses only the ongoing level of excellence that has come to be expected of us.