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According to Al Cleinman, VSP is hurting the very private practice doctors that it purports to help.

How ironic. Al has a whole bunch of posts about VSP. I would have to say that the only people VSP is trying to help are the execs at VSP. Of course they don’t care about the doctors. When they feed you the line that they are there to help traditional private practice doctors, it’s simply a marketing gimmick. And of course they don’t care about the patients either, otherwise they’d let them have freedom of choice to see any doctor they want, including a [gasp] Wal-Mart doctor.

Every year the great folks at Mount Ogden Eye Center throw a shindig for all the optometrists within their market area. They schmooze us with a fancy, delicious lunch at Sherwood Hills Resort and then treat us to a free round of 9-hole golf (with cart).

Of course they learned us stuff during the lunch (something about multi-focal IOLs and Intralase, I recon), but with the golf, they have prizes for the longest drive on one hole and the closest to the pin on the par-3 hole.

And guess who got the prize for the closest to the pin! Yep, me. And I have three witnesses. So I got a prize for free stuff at the club house.

Of course, don’t ask me about my 3-put on that hole, and also don’t ask me about my sixty-something score for nine holes, either.

Anyway, I highly recommend that all the optometrists in northern Utah attend next year.

Here’s an actual clean optometrist joke/cartoon. I’ve linked to Savage Chickens before, so if you haven’t already subscribed to its site feed, then now would be the appropriate time to do so.

And actually, if you are looking for more cartoons about optometry, then you should check out my Optoblog cartoons and put them in your slide shows for CE events and optometry school lectures. 😉

This is one way to explain conjunctivitis.

Any readers of this blog entry entitled “The Perks of an Optometry Career” need to read my “Do Not Become an Optometrist” entry or my “Should YOU Open a Private Practice?” entry.

How does the perk of working every Saturday sound? How do you like getting home many nights at 8:00 PM, (just in time to tuck your kids into bed)?

Unless an optometrist is employed by a big chain or there is some extreme emergency, hours are generally restricted to Monday through Friday with no on-call duty needed.

That’s not true in today’s market. Only government workers get Saturdays off now. More and more private practices offer extended hours and Saturday hours to stay competitive in today’s market. People don’t take time off work anymore just for routine eyecare (but of course they’ll do it for the dentist, but not you…a lowly optometrist).

Oh, and other doctors don’t have to worry about their scope of practice being legislated away.

And how do you like having a cap on potential income? You can only see so many patients a day. Get rich selling an unlimited number of widgets that everyone wants. Only become an optometrist because you love it…but, that begs the question how do you find out that you love optometry without going to expensive optometry school? By the way, when I went to optometry school (PUCO 2003), it cost about $22,000 per year for tuition, including fourth year when you’re not even at school because you are on preceptorship. Last I heard it’s up to $27,000 per year.

So my question is, at what price point does optometry school become unfeasible?

I’ve come across some websites you may be interested in:

• Local Eye Site

Interesting because it allows all people who work in the eyecare field to use the same site for forums, job search, and buy/sell equipment or practice. I especially like how it is open so that anyone can read what has been posted without being registered. Registration is free if you want to post something.


• Wal*Mart OD

See what your main competition is up to. You won’t be able to post anything, though, because registration is limited to Wal-Mart doctors like me.

• Association of LensCrafters Leaseholding Doctors (ALL Docs)

See what the Lenscrafters eye doctors are up to at this website. From the looks of it, half the site is dedicated to their National Meeting which includes “recreational and social events to help unwind.” A.K.A. providing plenty of booze so you can get hammered and make funny faces while being photographed for their website.

But seriously, what professional organization doesn’t spend all your dues and sponsors’ donations in support of this glorified purpose?

There was an interesting article written at the AmateurEconomist.com about “Why Doctors Are Not Good Businessmen.”

Hat tip to Kevin, M.D. who commented on this story and said,

“This is why the private practice model of medicine is dying. More practices are being bought by hospitals where the physicians are salaried. This relieves the burden of administrative tasks and supervising ancillary staff, so that the doctor can focus on medicine.”

Rob at VSP says that “[private practice doctors] provide the best care.” Well, if I’ve got the weight of a business on my shoulders, doesn’t that detract from patient care? Additionally, in our field where the private practice doctors sell what they prescribe, can you totally rule out any conflicts of interest which potentially detract from patient care?

Again, independent doctors of optometry in a Wal-Mart setting don’t have the conflict of interest and their administrative duties are much less than private practice.

What’s funny to me is that every CE event I’ve been to always has some talk about why optometrists should start the “medical model” in their practice and watch the money role in. Well, how is adding more third party payers going to help you make more money? Primary care medicine is dying according to Kevin M.D., and yet the roboconsultants are telling us to join more insurance panels. I think getting rid of insurance companies in your practice is the way of the future.

The roboconsultant woos you buy saying that for one case of dry eye you can milk an insurance company for $500-$800 in office visits and procedures. Well, do you do that for every dry eye patient, even the poor self pay patient or the patient with insurance but poor benefits? I would think that doing it just for those with good insurance would be unethical as well as probably insurance fraud.

I think the more your appointment book is filled up, the more you should be able to charge for your services. It’s the old supply and demand of free economics. I think a better system would be for patients to have to front the money to pay the doctor for office visits at the time of service. The patient would have to get reimbursed what they can from their insurance company. Maybe then insurance companies would be forced to have a faster turn around time on processing claims for their patients and be watched more closely for just rubber stamping a denial based on some frivolous billing exercise (or at the least the patient has to worry about it instead of me.) I simply provide the best care for the patient, recommending only the products and services that they need, since now I don’t have to worry about getting paid.

So Rob’s Blog has this to say to people about getting yearly diabetic eye exams. As if optometrists in a commercial setting don’t do the same thing, he tells a big lie here:

…these [private practice] doctors consistently have the longest relationships with their patients and provide the best care.

Rob, people aren’t buying what you’re selling anymore. I see VSP beneficiaries out of network all the time in my Wal-Mart setting. I guess they aren’t loyal to a practice setting, but rather they factor in price and convenience while assuming, correctly, that any doctor they see in my area is competent.

Oh, and I remember when Intel in the Hillsboro/Beaverton, Oregon area was buying your VSP, and then they switched to EyeMed. Does that mean they thought your private practice network of doctors couldn’t “provide the best care?”

But I see what he’s trying to do. Any roboconsultant will tell you that you need to differentiate yourself from the competition; however, I take exception when he lies.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I love kids. I have three young ones myself. I don’t even mind if patients bring their kids with them. We do that all the time. I don’t even mind if the kids are somewhat disruptive, like speaking out of turn, constantly asking questions, or even running around. It’s all good.

I was just speculating on what would happen if the kids where heck-bent on destroying stuff or if the parent decided not to manage inappropriate behavior at all and let them run around the office unsupervised. Then I thought it would be funny to put it in a cartoon. So don’t be upset. It’s comedy.

Bye the way, does anyone know the CPT Code for daycare?

2017-12-12 update:
This post is way out of date. In the wisdom of the government, the USPHS is apparently trying to be more military-like. One of the sequelae of this movement is that hardly anyone makes it to O-6 anymore- especially not some optometrist who often works alone, supervising one tech/receptionist. Even the Pharmacy Dept Supervisor, who supervises 3-4 other pharmacists plus 4-6 techs, is typically only given an O-5 billet! RIDICULOUS if you ask me.
So any calculations below from 2008 showing what great pay and retirement you’re going to get, heavily based on the idea that anyone who puts in the time will get an O-6 by the end of their career, are just plain wrong now. Those glory days are gone- sailed away with the salt-and-pepper uniform. I was going to delete the entire post, but I’ll leave it for posterity’s sake.

I worked for the USPHS, detailed to the IHS, for 2 years. I would have stayed longer, but I wanted to live in Utah or Idaho. The positions available in these two states were filled with young optometrists that appeared to me like they weren’t going to move away anytime soon, so I made my move to go into private practice and then later into Wal-Mart practice.

Looking back on my decision to leave, it would have been much better for my financial situation to stay. In fact, I am going to argue that for any optometrist, the financial rewards for practicing optometry are equal to and most likely better in the Commissioned Corps than in the private sector.

Government optometry work seems to get little attention in optometry school. Most everyone has delusions of grandeur about how comfortable their living will be while working in private practice. Of course, that dream turns into a nightmare when they work for another optometrist paying them little more than a resident but with the hint or promise of a buy in which later fizzles out.

Many people think of government optometry only when they want to go into the military just to get their school loans paid off and then get out. Many do not stay because promotion in the military is limited. Many years ago the USPHS used to have an automatic promotion schedule, but that has been replaced by merit promotions. A recent transformation of the commissioned corps of the USPHS has made it harder to get promoted just for showing up; however, your chances of getting promoted to O-6 (equivalent to a Colonel or a Navy Captain) are much better in the USPHS than other uniformed services.

For an estimate of what monetary compensation you might get in the USPHS, I’ve made this table. It’s a little tough to understand unless you are used to military pay systems. They have what is called base pay which is calculated from your rank and years of service. But then other types of pay like Housing Allowance and Subsistence which are variable depending on where you live. You also get pay for being an optometrist: Optometrist Special Pay and Optometrist Retention Pay which helps equal your pay to private sector optometrists. You can get even more money by getting your FAAO and by hopefully getting loan repayment. Also you get up to $1000 reimbursement per year for travel and tuition expenses for continuing education.

My PHS pay estimate is based on a theoretical advancement in rank. Promotion is not guaranteed nor is it on a set timetable. There has been cases where an officer was frozen at O-5 and wasn’t allowed to be promoted to O-6. I also assume that one stays 30 years in the corps. You can get out as soon as 20 years, but your retirement compensation is less.

Now, I’m no accountant or financial planner, but I believe that my PHS pay estimate table shows that compensation inside PHS is probably better than what you can expect to achieve in the private sector as an optometrist. A private sector optometrist would have to invest ~$24,000 a year just to get the same retirement that a 30-year PHS optometrist gets.

Anyway, this should dispel the myth that PHS optometry pay isn’t comparable to private or commercial optometrist pay. I’d say it’s better based on my calculations.

Now, what can you expect if your join the USPHS? There are a small few who work in the FDA and Bureau of Prisons. You could also work your way up and do non-clinical duties at USPHS headquarters. But the majority of PHS optometrists work in the Indian Health Service. You can work in the IHS as a civil servant or direct tribal hire, but for a career IHS optometrist it is most advantageous to go the commissioned corps route. Same job as an optometrist but different pay system.

Where can you work? Well, here is a map.

But a better way is to browse through the PHS-IHS directory regularly updated here. But not every place has an opening, so you need to look at the current Vacancy Announcement (a.k.a. Recruitment Announcement) regularly updated here at the IHS Optometry web page.

You can find optometry job announcements in IHS by going to their website job page and then selecting “Optometrist” in the Professional Categories pick list. I find that this page isn’t updated as quickly as the IHS optometry page, though.

In my next few posts, I’ll talk about non-monetary benefits of working for PHS-IHS, tips and tricks for applying with the PHS-IHS, more about rank advancement, and the Loan Repayment Program.

For more information about calculating pay in the USPHS system, see these sites:

• USPHS.gov benefits overview
• Military Pay Calculator
• Military Basic Pay table or USPHS Basic Pay Table
• Basic Allowance for Housing is the biggest variable, estimated in table it at ~1200.
• Basic Allowance for Subsistence now at $202.76