Building a Dry Eye Practice

You know the story; it might even be your story. Graduate optometry school with a lot of enthusiasm—and a lot of debt. Pick up all the extra days you can just to stay afloat financially. Now you’re in the high-volume, low-reward daily grind of refraction, primary eye care and the same old conversations with patients about what astigmatism is. Hello, burnout.

What to do? For Ada Noh, OD, the answer was to commit to a specialty concentration in dry eye, forgoing the trappings of routine eye care—bye-bye, phoropter!—for the intellectual stimulation of advanced care and the risks and rewards of self-employment.

Dr. Noh describes her journey to specialty practice with great anecdotes about how she came to face her fears about starting cold, in an unfamiliar new city to boot. Job one was building a referral base and that meant embracing self-promotion far and wide to optometrists, ophthalmologists, other health care professions and frankly anyone else who’d hear her out. She says giving up primary care entirely rather than the half-a-loaf approach of adding a dry eye clinic to a general practice was a winning strategy, as other eyecare providers had no reason to see her as a threat. Instead, she became a resource to them.

Addressing the misconception that you need to sink a lot of money into a specialty practice, Dr. Noh reassures listeners that you could start without much more than a slit lamp and a bottle of Fluress if you want. It’s the extra time and attention you give patients that often makes a decisive difference to them. She does also share her thoughts on the most helpful devices to add—notably, meibography and IPL—as you ramp up over time.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Noh returns to the themes of believing in yourself and having the tenacity to take on whatever comes your way. “Don’t wait for ‘perfect’ because it’s not gonna come,” she counsels. The rewards for all this hard work and risk-taking go beyond the financial. She has more autonomy than ever before.

Amazingly, Dr. Noh is about to take the plunge a second time. Having recently sold the practice she started only a few years ago, she’s moving to a bigger market and will do it all over again, beginning this fall. Stay tuned for future updates on her second (or maybe third?) act!

Relevant articles worth reading:

“Why Isn’t My Dry Eye Therapy Working?”

By Ada Noh, OD

Dive Into Dry Eye

With advice from Cory Lappin, OD, Hamza Shah, OD, Michelle Hessen, OD, and Erica Udell, OD

Pathways to Specialization: Find–and Follow–Your Calling

With advice from Kelly Cohen, OD, Emilie Seitz, OD, Rami Aboumourad, OD, Joseph Sowka, OD, Cory Lappin, OD, Marie Homa-Palladino, OD, Langis Michaud, OD, Michael Cymbor, OD, Erin Tomiyama, OD, PhD, and Diane T. Adamcyzk, OD