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Big ideas are often borne of simple, straight-forward beliefs and the launch, growth and successful expansion of MyEyeDr. into an eyecare powerhouse over the past two decades stands as a prime example of this theory. The company’s mission, in its simplest form, since the beginning has been to bring together a focus on eye health with the expertise that enables patients to see, look and be their best.





At the core of this effort are the roughly 1,400 ODs and other ECPs who work each day to carry out this mission. The success of their efforts—and the way the group address the eyecare opportunity—is shown in the track record MyEyeDr. has established during its two decades of leadership in the areas of optical retail and eyecare for all patients.

“Our focus has really been around how do we make sure that the patient is getting everything that they need, both from a refractive standpoint and also from an overall health care standpoint,” MyEyeDr. chief medical officer Dr. Artis Beatty said in a recent interview with Vision Monday. “And when you’re thinking about the health care aspect, how do you make sure that you are maximizing that availability for the patient?”

Thinking about the health care aspect of eyecare is one way that MyEyeDr. opens up new opportunities for both patients and the ODs who become part of the overall company. This comes about whether it’s addressing the more general routine eyecare or working toward expanding the scope of practice in areas often referred to as the field of “medical optometry” in the language of today.

“When we think about optometry in general, we often use that term ‘medical optometry,’ but I don’t know whether it’s really different than what we have been able to do and that we continue to do as optometrists in general,” Dr. Beatty said.

He added, “The work that we are doing is much more around making sure that we have the ability to take care of our patients’ needs no matter what those needs are within this current scope of optometry. And as you know the scope of optometry continues to grow and to change.

“And if I were to think about full-scope care 10 to 12 years ago, I would think about doctors who had the ability to see their patients and to manage the normal course of ocular disease. They would have been managing diabetic health care, managing their patients with glaucoma, and be taking care of their red eyes, their allergy needs, dry eye, and so forth. But they’d be doing it with varying scopes and ability.”

And none of those scopes at that time really included being able to make some of the surgical decisions that doctors are able to make today regarding the use of laser technology for things in and around the eye, as optometrists have been able to do now in multiple states, and that number continues to grow.

Overall, patients and consumers tend to think of their optometrist as “their eye doctor, and whether they need to have their glasses updated or they end up with a red eye or an eye that is irritated or they’ve got glaucoma …. they just know they come to their eye doctor and they get all that stuff taken care of.”

He added, “We really look at what is the definition of full-scope optometry in the individual states where we have offices and doctors because that does vary. We look at what the doctors in those locations are really interested in providing and do they have any special skill sets that they want to share with the patient population.”


Coming on Board With MyEyeDr.
Dr. Beatty was part of an early MyEyeDr. integration, in 2014 with Eye Care Associates where he was one of the clinical directors within that group. “As we came on with MyEyeDr., the organization was in a transition phase, expanding from the Northern Virginia area and entering North Carolina, where, in general the scope of practice is greater.

“And Sue Downes wanted to have the ability to think differently about all of the services that could be offered in a state that had a fuller scope-of-practice than in all of the states that she had been operating in previously. I stepped into this role at the time and there we were only about 120 offices or so and I have grown up with the company as the company has continued to grow.”

Today, when a new a new practice comes on board with MyEyeDr., the doctors who had been managing the practice often stay on board. “We want the ODs to stay on board,” Dr. Beatty said. “For the vast majority of practices that we partner with, the OD is becoming a part of the MyEyeDr. family. We want to make sure that we have continuity for patients, and we want to be able to give those doctors different opportunities and give them different resources” without disrupting the patient experience.

Dr. Beatty also noted that some of the ODs who join MyEyeDr., which “most often promotes from within,” tend to move into managerial or leadership roles.

“When we think about our leadership structure, it’s important for us to note that we have doctors leading doctors, from the top down, within our organization. In some other organizations, there may be non-ODs who are in the leadership roles, that shape what the doctors do in the clinics. We’re not built that way,” he said.

Rolling into this philosophy is the effort to work with doctors from a marketing standpoint and from a referral standpoint in a way that they are able to bring the types of patients they are really interested in seeing into those practices and then helping the patients better understand the opportunities available for care with MyEyeDr. This includes communication tools from email to more traditional advertising and marketing channels, as well as social media, radio and other media.


The Organizational Structure




In terms of the internal structure at MyEyeDr. there is a vice president of professional services and a director of clinical excellence.

The vice president of professional services—Scott Allison, OD—oversees day-to-day professional operations, and he has a team of regional clinical directors who oversee large areas of the clinics and clinical field directors, who report to them and who are much more locally focused.

The director of clinical excellence—Jeff Strand, OD, MBA—oversees various initiatives and operational areas. Within this framework and under clinical excellence, there are a number of doctors who look at new and emerging technologies, doctors who work to develop in-office efficiency with EHR platforms and operations, and doctors who assist and address peer review and overall instruction and education of the doctors within our organization, Dr. Beatty said.

“All of this funnels up through what we call clinical excellence,” Dr. Beatty said. “Together that helps us really set direction and helps us think about things that may be immediately important, but also things that are on the horizon, things that we should be thinking about on a go-forward basis.”

Within the organization there are doctors who are dedicated to training and onboarding, and they are the clinical managers. “They are even more local than the clinical field directors and so they are really tasked with helping doctors understand how to operate day-to-day,” Dr. Beatty said.

All of these professionals continue to practice in the clinics, and Dr. Beatty also sees patients periodically, as well as everybody on the ECP team who does.

He also noted that MyEyeDr. is a founding member of the American Optometric Association advocacy roundtable, which helps with providing an external and global view of areas that the AOA is thinking about. This roundtable group, which includes other larger players within the eyecare space, is an open forum for discussion and understanding of key issues, advocacy efforts and legislative matters, with a goal of helping to “really build the profession,” he noted.

In addition, chief executive Sue Downes is deeply involved with The Vision Council, and is able to keep the senior leadership and medical team at MyEyeDr. informed about emerging issues. MyEyeDr. also is actively involved in state and local organizations and societies in eyecare, as well.


Working Through the Pandemic Pause
All of these things came together at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when many eyecare offices were closed or operating at reduced hours and capacity. Dr. Beatty noted that it was key for MyEyeDr. to emphasize how optometry comes under the umbrella of an essential health care service, which enabled the company to meet patient needs “in a new and more immediate way.”

Optometry visits may have been considered essential on the patient side, whether for vision correction and/or treatment of ocular disease, but it was just as important for industry leaders to advocate and work to bring eyecare “to the forefront,” he noted.

Dr. Beatty noted that the team “didn’t change the goalpost due to COVID,” but rather had the opportunity to accelerate implementation of technological developments already being considered.

He also noted that a mindset reset during the pandemic’s height was necessary to create a good remote experience while meeting standards of care and patient experience. This “pause” allowed the group to bring all practices to a uniform EHR standard, think about synchronous and asynchronous visits, and how to best provide patients with remote care while meeting the expectations they were accustomed to in-office.

Over the past year, and in recognition of the 20th anniversary, Dr. Beatty said MyEyeDr. has spent some time looking at its goals and targets for the next 20 years. This includes considering how the company thinks about the ways in which eyecare may evolve going forward.

“And we really looked at doing things internally for our associates and our doctors,” he added. “We grew our One Family Fund, which is a fund set aside to help MyEyeDr. associates and doctors in need. That came about as an organizational change at the end of 2020 and going into 2021 as part of the celebration.”

He added, “We also focused on alignment and how do we make sure that everybody understands where we are, where we want to be and how we’re going to get there. All of those things are part of having a birthday, reassessing where you are and looking at how you want to see the future.”