EyeCode Media

Dr. Amir Khoshnevis received his Doctor of Optometry at Pennsylvania College of Optometry and his B.S. in Biology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Khoshnevis has held appointments and positions with numerous national health care entities. He is the recipient of several awards including 2011 Philanthropist of the Year by Optometry Giving Sight.

Dr. Khoshnevis is the founder of Vision Source Studio 20/20 with two locations in Charlotte, NC.

Amir has been a Vision Source Administrator since 2003 and has served as an Advisory Board member and Senior Advisor to the company. Recently, Dr. Khoshnevis joined the Vision Source leadership team as Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer where he works to ensure that the voice and vision of the private practice optometrist continue to guide the network.

Dr. McFerron received her Bachelor of Science from The University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2003. Her Doctorate of Optometry was received in 2008 at the Oklahoma College of Optometry at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In July 2008, Dr. McFerron moved from Oklahoma to Oregon where she practiced in Woodburn for 3 years. In October 2011 Dr. McFerron bought Canby Eyecare from Dr. Don Chase after 37 years of ownership.

During her education, Dr. McFerron was trained in ocular disease, specialty contact lenses, and pediatrics, as well as all forms of primary care optometry. She is certified to use therapeutic pharmaceutical agents to treat glaucoma, iritis, “red eye” and other anterior eye diseases. Dr. McFerron’s main interests in optometry include contact lenses, ocular disease, and pediatrics.

Dr. McFerron is a member of the American Optometric Association (AOA), the Portland Metropolitan Optometric Society (PMOS), and the Oregon Optometric Physicians Association (OOPA). She also a past President of OOPA.

In 2013 Dr. McFerron was named the Oregon Young Optometrist of the Year.

In her spare time Dr. McFerron enjoys exercising, reading, cycling, cooking, and traveling to see her family and friends that are spread all across the US.

This week we take listener questions:

1. How many people are tuning in?

Dr. McElroy, founded Ted A. McElroy, OD, PC in 1994 in Tifton, GA. He is a graduate of Southern College of Optometry. In 2004 he served as the Georgia Optometric Association President and is currently serving as the treasurer of SECO International. Dr. McElroy was the recipient of the 1997 GA Optometric Association’s Young Optometrist of the Year, the 2005 GOA Optometrist of the year and the 2009 GOA Bernard Kahn Award Recipient. His passion is his connection with his patients. His goal is to exceed his patient’s expectations, service and to offer his patients a better quality of life. Dr. McElroy strives to provide his patients with an experience that cannot be found anywhere else in eye care. He is continually looking to industries and businesses outside Optometry to find these examples of excellence.

Dr. McElroy is a founding member of The Roya Enterprise, an organization dedicated to assisting aspiring practice owners. He enjoys speaking to students on the joys of private practice and is an author published in Optometric Management, also serving on their editorial board. He spends a great deal of his time with his wife and two sons traveling to swim meets, going to Disney World and enjoying time with them.

Dr. Jeffrey Krohn was unsure of where his future would take him as a college student. After bouncing around from Architecture (Cal Poly, SLO) and Business (Point Loma College) and Engineering (Fresno State), his father helped him “see” that his future was as an optometrist. After completing the optometric training, he was asked to join the same faculty that taught him for two yeas. With a desire to put down roots in the valley, he and his wife moved to Fresno in 1989 with their son, Austin. Over the past 20+ years in Fresno, they have been involved with church and community activities, have had 3 daughters (Aubrey, Olivia and Emmaline) and have been blessed with great staff and great friends. Dr. Krohn has a particular passion and interest in patients who require specialized and unique contact lens designs, and receives referrals from other doctors and organizations from up and down the central valley.

We discuss Dr. Bob Vandervort, who was a mentor to both Jeff and I, and below is a picture of Jeff posing as Bob at a skit while he was in school:

Dr. Scott Schachter founded Advanced Eyecare and the Eyewear Gallery Optometry in 1994 in Pismo Beach, California. He believes in the importance of providing full scope eye care for his patients and was one of the first optometrists in California to become glaucoma certified.

Like many practitioners, the ocular surface disease was a neglected part of his practice for almost 2 decades. Then, in 2011, while undergoing his own LASIK preop visit, Dr. Schachter realized his own dry eye disease was causing the majority of his higher order aberrations. Dry eye disease was no longer limited to just the surface — Dr. Schachter started thinking of it as a vision disease.

Since that auspicious LASIK preop visit, Dr, Schachter has worked to become a leader in the dry eye world. He has been published in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science and is a regular columnist for Optometry Times and Ocular Surface News. In addition, he has presented papers at the American Academy of Optometry (AAO) and presented posters at AAO, American Optometric Association, and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.

Check out The Ocular Surface Academy!

Caroline Blackie is an internationally recognized clinical and scientific expert in the field of dry eye with specific focus on meibomian gland dysfunction. She has authored and published over 40 scientific articles in this area. She currently serves as the Medical Director for Ocular Surface Disease for Johnson and Johnson Vision, providing medical and scientific leadership to drive and shape innovation in this therapeutic area.  Dr. Blackie joined Johnson and Johnson Vision after 12 years with TearScience. At TearScience, she served on the small team of individuals who imagined, designed, developed, tested, and brought to market all of the TearScience Products. Passionate about the patient experience, she also successfully divided her time between clinical research and development and private practice, accruing approximately 20 years of direct patient care experience in her career.  Her years in direct clinical care, fuel her desire to elevate and transform the standard of care towards a more proactive approach to ocular surface health.

Brian Regan is a growth, launch and turnaround sales and marketing executive with history delivering innovation for patient care, revenue growth and significant investor value. Skilled in leadership of sales and marketing, business strategy, market research, KOL development, customer service, CRM, and metrics reflecting progress on KPI’s. 

Dr. Louis Catania is an internationally renowned lecturer on optometry’s role in diagnosis and treatment of anterior segment diseases. He was a Pennsylvania College of Optometry faculty member until 1995, serving as Associate Professor. Dr. Catania also directed the Center for Continuing and Post Graduate Education (now the Department of International and Continuing Education). As the first Director of the Center for International Studies, Dr. Catania played a pivotal role in expanding the College’s educational scope worldwide. He is the author of Primary Care of the Anterior Segment and an accompanying audio-visual series. Dr. Catania was named Alumnus of the Year in 1994. He has served as senior clinical consultant for Nicolitz Eye Consultants for the past 15 years. In 2013, Dr. Catania was named the American Academy of Optometry’s Eminent Service Awardee.  Dr. Catania was inducted into the National Optometry Hall of Fame in 2016.

This weeks discussion was with Dr. Amanda Lee.  In addition to practicing optometry for 20 years, Dr. Lee has been a professional speaker and consultant for Alcon, Bausch & Lomb and MacuLogix. She earned her BA in Biology from Central Connecticut State University before earning a BS in Visual Science and Doctorate of Optometry from Pennsylvania College of Optometry.  She also completed a Residency in Primary Care/Ocular Disease at The Eye Institute in Philadelphia, PA.

Dr. Mike Rothschild began his practice from scratch in his wife's rural hometown and enjoyed immediate practice success that multiplied for several years. This success took more and more time away from what really mattered in his life. More patients led to more staff, more equipment and more hours at the office. Not being able to do it all, Mike's practice began to suffer until he realized that he didn't know how to lead a team. 

He studied leadership strategies from some of the most successful businesses in the service industry and successfully implemented them into his own practice. He learned the importance of systems, communication and teamwork to reach goals that he could never attain alone.

He now shares those experiences with doctors and their teams and has a unique ability to ask the right questions, to keep digging until he finds your individual "why". And it's different for everyone and most often it involves many aspects outside of the practice.

Mike Rothschild graduated from the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis and was honored as an Outstanding Clinician. He lectures internationally on topics of practice management, leadership, contact lenses and ocular disease.

He practices in Carrollton, GA and married to Christy. They have two children.