ECP Viewpoints

ECP Viewpoints recognizes that optometrists have more options than ever in terms of how they practice. And we’re exploring those options with practitioners who work in those different settings every day. In this first episode of the series, Dr. Jennifer Palombi spoke with Dr. Michael Shaheen from Hills and Dales Vision Care about his path to independent private practice.

For Shaheen, eye care is in the blood; it’s a family thing. His uncle is an optometrist with fifty years of experience. Through a school career shadowing project in the sixth grade with his uncle, Shaheen knew something about optometry he wanted to pursue. “I thought it was so neat. I sat in the back office with him, saw what he did, and what I remembered the most is he mentioned every single person is like a puzzle, and I’ve always had the knack of wanting to fix little things here and there. And since that day, I got interested in it, and it was at the top of my list, and I never swayed from it.”

Shaheen pursued his dreams of becoming an optometrist, but when it came time to set up practice, he didn’t need to look any further than his Canton, Ohio roots. He went to work at his uncle’s practice and continues his work through Hills and Dales Vision Care.

Being in a private practice environment provides many benefits. “We’re 100% independent,” Shaheen said. And that gives his practice freedom. “You can practice any way you want. You can specialize in sports vision; you can do general optometry; you could be a ped’s specialist; you could be a geriatrics specialist; you could add whatever equipment you want. There are always little aspects of the profession that you could open to and start, whether it’s dry eye treatment, more advanced dry eye treatment, therapies, OTC scans…you can get as medical as you want, non-medical as you want. The choices are the beauty of private practice for us.”

Did the pandemic kick off a trend in new contact lens wearers? Perhaps all the mask-wearing and fogged-up glasses played a role. ECP Viewpoints host, Dr. Jennifer Palombi, invited Dr. Jennifer Stewart from OD Perspectives to discuss this uptick in new wearers and how clariti® 1 day contacts make a good fit for patients new to contact lens wear.

“The interest has been really high on contact lenses, and it’s been a great time for new wearers because I think Clariti is such a great choice for these first-time and new wearers,” Stewart said. “It’s my workhorse lens. It’s the lens I reach for time and time again. My scribes in my office don’t even wait; they know when a patient starts discussing contact lenses, and they’re a new wearer, they’re already out of the room grabbing those lenses because they are my go-to choice.”

Most contact lens prescriptions at Dr. Stewart’s office are daily disposables. And while some of her patients still choose bi-weekly or monthly lenses, the conversation is switching more and more to daily lenses. “I think that now they put a higher priority on health, hygiene, cleanliness, and disposability than before so that conversation about price is not as much of an issue as it had been in the past,” Stewart said.

Stewart said the price point of Clariti makes it an affordable option to switch over from monthly and two-week lenses to a single use. “It’s not as much of a jump as some of the premium lens products out there.”

For those with environmental concerns over daily disposable lenses, Clariti 1 day is the first net plastic neutral contact lens in the U.S. Stewart said she loves when people bring these concerns up because it provides an opportunity to let them know about this news. “These contacts are less wasteful, which sounds crazy, but they are less wasteful than the lenses you’re actually wearing.” When considering all of the plastic that goes into solution bottles and storage cases that people go through in a year with monthly and two-week lenses, the cost comparisons and environmental savings mean single-use lenses can be a viable daily option.

When students graduate from optometry school, they are prepared to be clinicians and take care of patients. However, it doesn’t take long for graduates to realize they are much more than doctors. Running an optometry practice requires doctors to be a jack of all trades and many quickly realize they simply don’t have the skill set to run a business—not to mention the knowledge needed to overcome common challenges of practice management. Dr. Jennifer Palombi, Senior Manager of Professional Education and Development at CooperVision® and ECP Viewpoints podcast host, sat down with Dr. Matthew Greene, Owner of Urban Optics, and Dr. Breann Forliti, Owner and CEO at Blaine Eye Clinic, to discuss the importance of long-term planning to a practice’s success.

Dr. Jennifer Palombi speaks with Alice Hsueh about the new net plastic neutrality initiative started by CooperVision back in 2021. The program partnered with Plastic Bank in 171 unique coastal cities to clean up plastic waste and helps the environment by directly impacting people taking part through its plastic collection in exchange for food, water, and education. The program started in 2021 with Clarity One Day contact lenses and expanded to the CooperVision My Day product line this year.

The net plastic neutrality program collects and reprocesses plastic material into the global market. In the first year, the program collected an equivalent of 22 million plastic water bottles. To put it into perspective, Hseuh explained, if the bottles were stacked on top of each other, “it would be 13 times taller than the Empire State Building.”

After adding the My Day family of products and expanding the partnership with Plastic Bank, CooperVision has set the goal of collecting the equivalent of 55 million plastic bottles this year, which is more than double the impact made in 2021.

Hsueh expressed that the practitioner and offices can benefit from aligning with CooperVision’s net neutrality plastic products and initiative. A majority of US consumers report that sustainability is a significant factor in maintaining loyal patients. When practices align themselves with the values of their market, it creates an emotional connection. Emotional connections lead to word-of-mouth referrals. Doctors can gain a competitive edge in their market with this differentiator. Furthermore, 8/10 surveyed that wear contact lenses would be more interested in wearing them if the lens was net plastic neutral.

CooperVision is committed to sustainable practices. Plastic is vital to the hygienic delivery and sterile production of contact lenses. Both facilities that manufacture One Day and My Day products focus on four pillars of sustainability which include water, energy, recycling, and the individuals involved in manufacturing. The facilities aim to conserve water and recycle plastic use in production.

For eye care professionals, philanthropic efforts to bring eye care to those in need can be a rewarding experience. CooperVision reached out to two esteemed vision practitioners who joined forces on a vision care mission. Brittani Carver-Schemper from the Better Vision Optometric Center and Dr. Faheem Inayatali at the Eye Center of Houston, 2019 Best Practices honorees, spoke about their endeavors to bring eye care to people who need it the most.

Dr. Carver-Schemper’s first mission came in 2014 when she traveled to India to provide vision care to a group of orphan children. In recent years she’s visited the Dominican Republic on a similar mission, including one just completed this year.

Dr. Inayatali said that his practice serves many people in need in the Houston area and abroad. He believes in the duty to help where he can and seeing the reaction on a patient’s face when they receive a donated pair of glasses is the ultimate reward.

Dr. Carver-Schemper works with an established mission team in the Dominican Republic that helped organize her most recent trip in 2022, in which she and Dr. Inayatali saw over 300 patients in two days. “They were great, great days, but we were tired by the end of it,” Dr. Carver-Schemper explained. And her most memorable moment was discovering a seven-year-old with eye pain. She and Dr. Inayatali were able to diagnose and treat the issue that otherwise would have led to a serious problem if left undetected. The child would not have received this treatment if the mission trip wasn’t organized.

Dr. Inayatali was looking for an opportunity to do more for others, and this trip provided him the chance to make a difference. “We’re eye doctors, and the eyes are connected to the rest of the body. And we get that opportunity to diagnose and be able to save lives just like that.”

Dr. Pamela Lowe from Professional Eye Care Center, and Dr. Melanie Frogozo, from Alamo Eye Care, joined host, Dr. Jennifer Palombi, for an essential discussion on advocacy in eye care.

There are many reasons for eye care professionals to get involved with advocacy, and the paths for Dr. Lowe and Dr. Frogozo were different. For Dr. Frogozo, who began her optometry career in 2008, the desire for self-improvement for both her and her colleagues led to an interest in advocacy.

Listen in to learn more about advocacy in our profession; where we’ve been, where we are and were we want to be headed.

Diversity is an important topic, especially when it comes to the workplace. Only 3.2 percent of optometry students and 1.8 percent of practicing optometrists identifying as Black or African American, according to Black Eye Care Perspective.

Here to give insights on this episode of ECP Viewpoints, Host Dr. Jennifer Palombi discussed diversity in eye care with Dr. Adam Ramsey of Socialite Vision and Dr. Maurice Zadeh of Family Eyecare of Roswell.

The path toward sustainability is gathering more and more supporters. Everyday tactics can be easily incorporated to cut waste and increase recycling. But can eye care be sustainable? What are the steps practitioners can take to achieve it? ECP Viewpoints host Dr. Jennifer Palombi spoke with Dr. Shane Foster, Athens Eye Care, and Dr. Michael Koditek, Carbon Valley Eye Care, about their eco-friendly initiatives.