![]() ![]() map could determine your practice’s future well-being, according to Mr. Preece identifies, with insights from Dr. What circumstances might set solo ophthalmologists up to fight for their survival? What factors might work in their favor? What battles might lay ahead for solo ophthalmologists? Here are a few points of interest that Mr. Having built it up under those circumstances, I feel like my practice was battle-tested from the beginning,” he says. I had to build up from one patient a day, and I had to use a ‘free’ general medical EHR. So I was already starting out with the odds stacked against me. ![]() And there was an upcoming presidential election as we headed into a recession. There was the housing-market collapse the stock market crashed in September 2008. “When I started my practice, it was during a time of economic uncertainty,” he says. Nemi notes that he founded his practice in the fall of 2008 surrounded by financial turbulence. So first of all, if you’re a small practice in a town that isn’t a suburb with a big populace, you’re still going to be able to see your patients and continue on as you have been-albeit with some challenges.”ĭr. “Many of the private-equity consolidators are mainly focused on big practices in big markets. “Can small, independent practices still survive? Yes, especially in smaller towns,” he says. Regarding the future of solo ophthalmology practices of all types, Mr. The third definition of a solo practice is something I call solo ownership: This is where one doctor owns the practice, but might employ four or five ophthalmologists and several optometrists.” Another is where you have one ophthalmologist who may have one or two optometrists working for him or her. ![]() “There are a couple of definitions of solo practice,” he explains. Preece notes that the term “solo practice” encompasses more than just the one-doctor model that Dr. That’s what led me to start my own practice in the fall of 2008.” I did look at some practices that were for sale, but I decided that if I really wanted to do this, I’d have to build something from scratch the way I wanted it, rather than trying to rework something that already existed. “That forced me to realize that in order to practice the way I wanted to, I was going to have to do things my way. Within six months, I found myself not wanting to wake up on Monday mornings to go to work, and I thought, ‘I went through 30 years of schooling and training-and I wake up on Mondays feeling this way?’ ” he recalls. “After finishing my cornea fellowship at Emory, I started work out West in a group practice. “I did a combined MD/MBA at Tufts University, and I always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” he says. He’s the owner and sole practitioner at Lotus Eye, where he focuses on cataract, refractive and comprehensive ophthalmology in Alpharetta, Georgia. Does this mean that solo practices are destined to get squeezed out of ophthalmology?Īnjit Nemi, MD, MBA, doesn’t think so. But there are also other forces at work,” he says. “There are market forces driving towards consolidation in ophthalmology, private equity being the primary force. Nobody really knew how prevalent it would become,” says Derek Preece, MBA, principal and senior consultant with BSM Consulting in Orem, Utah. “Even as late as 2016, private equity was just making a few rumblings in ophthalmology. ![]() I n case you missed it, ophthalmology has caught the eye of private-equity investors. ![]()
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