Dr. Barney with his wife, Kristen, whom he practices with. Dr. Barney said it’s been rewarding practicing with Kristen, but that having a practice partner who is also a spouse is not without its challenges.
Building an even better practice with family.
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By Tyler Barney, OD,
and Mark Schaeffer, OD, FAAO
Oct. 16, 2024
Practicing with family members offers both great opportunities and potential challenges.
Two optometrists share the rewards, advantages, and potential difficulties, of working in practices with family.
Both doctors are honorees of CooperVision’s 2024 Best Practices Program.
Husband & Wife Practice: Powering Advanced Care & Significant Profitability
Tyler Barney, OD
Eagle Vision
Eagle Mountain, Utah
I practice with my wife, Kristen. We cold-started our practice in August of 2014. Prior to that, I practiced in the Air Force for three years, then in a commercial setting for four years. We had been married for 13 years and had six children when we started the practice.
I desired to practice optometry differently than my previous office settings allowed, and we together wanted more control of our time so that we could focus on our family. It seemed very natural for us to own and operate our business together, and I can’t imagine doing it another way. We work well together and are able to challenge each other without lasting conflict.
Tyler Barney, OD
We definitely have different opinions, but these differences help us achieve better solutions. If we are unsettled on something, we will continue to discuss and sit on it until we feel good about the best path forward.
Pros: We can carry the weight of business ownership together; solve problems together; we trust each other. Kristen takes on some of the administrative demands during the day while I’m seeing patients so that we have more time with our family.
Cons: There is a constant weight of the practice on our minds; it is difficult sometimes to separate home and work; date night turns into work discussions often.
We take time daily to discuss what is happening in the business and have a business consultant that I talk to regularly to help us see things that we might otherwise miss. We also chat with our management team within the practice on a regular basis. There is power in counseling with each other and those we trust. Then, we together, make decisions about how to best proceed.
Our approach is working well for us. In our first year in practice, our gross receipts were about $290,000, and in our tenth year, we are on track to generate $2.6 million. We consistently have grown around 20 percent each year.
As we have brought on new technologies and expanded our focus, we have increased our revenue per patient 43 percent from the first year.
We started our practice in a 1,200 sq. ft. rented space. Three years later, we hired an associate to work one day per week. We then started working on getting our own building built.
In February of 2020, we moved our practice to a new 6,000 sq. ft. building. We occupy 3,200 sq. ft. and are renting the rest of the space. This has allowed us to expand our associate’s time, and he quickly became full time. Financially, it is a tremendous blessing to own our own building. It has also provided opportunities for us to engage our children in helping to manage our property.
In the future we plan to continue to expand into the rest of our building and add more associate doctors.
Mark Schaeffer, OD, FAAO
Sibling ODs Taking the Reins from Dad: Continuity of Care Spanning Generations
Mark Schaeffer, OD, FAAO
MyEyeDr. (formerly Schaeffer Eye Center)
Birmingham, Ala.
Our practice, founded decades ago by our father, Jack Schaeffer, OD, FAAO, has undergone a transition in recent years to become part of MyEyeDr. Though no longer owned by my family, it is still a family practice in that I still work with my brother and sister.
Our family’s decades of ownership before selling to a larger organization means that we developed an owner’s mentality, which is still in place. We are conscious of trends in patient care and also know how to enhance every piece of the eye exam experience. Having that ownership experience before becoming part of MyEyeDr. was a massive leg up in my growth as an OD.
Dr. Schaeffer (second from left as you look at photo) with siblings Brooke Schaeffer Kaplan, OD, and David Schaeffer, OD, FAAO. They stand with their father, Jack Schaeffer, OD, founder of Schaeffer Eye Center, now owned by MyEyeDr. Dr. Schaeffer says the tight bonds with his siblings make for an even stronger practice.
Relationships are key in this business. The patient always comes first, and focusing on the highest level of care is something we should always strive to provide.
Relationships are formed in thousands of interactions every day, among staff, between patients, and throughout the entire industry. They are the lifeblood of our practice and profession.
It has been reassuring to our patients that the transition of care in our office continues to other family members. They trusted my dad to take care of their visual and ocular health needs, and now they trust my brother, sister and me. They keep coming back because they want to be treated like family, and what better way than continuing with the same family for their eyecare?
I love when patients tell me about their first (or most memorable) exam with my dad as their doctor. It’s another way that I can build that relationship by talking to the patients about shared experiences.
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My brother and I look alike, especially for those who have a casual, one-time-per-year relationship. I was at a social event, and someone came running up to me to tell me about their resolution of an eye problem. When I was nodding, I must not have been as enthusiastic about the results as they expected because the person stopped their story to ask “Wait…are you not my doctor?” And I had to explain that they see my brother, but I was still happy to hear it.
Optometry as a profession is a tight-knit community, one that has provided an environment that has allowed me to elevate how I take care of my patients, and one that has given me lifelong friendships and bonds across the country.
Having a father who founded the practice where I now work, and where my siblings work, makes my job even more fulfilling and meaningful. Our patients benefit from visiting an office in which the doctors have a long history, and such a close, familial bond with each other.
>>Click HERE to learn more about CooperVision’s Best Practices Program>>
