Hiring the Right OD for Our Family Practice

I was born and raised in Sunnyside, Washington, a small town nestled in the scenic Yakima Valley. My dad was an optometrist, having chosen the profession because he read in a magazine that it was the most family-friendly career, and my siblings and I loved how present he was in our lives. Wanting the same experience for our own families, my two brothers and I followed in his footsteps and today, we all practice together in the town we’ve always called home.

Working in a small-town family practice has a lot of perks. I love getting to spend time with my brothers every day, shooting the breeze or even watching a baseball game together between appointments. My patients are people I’ve known most of my life, and because of the deep roots in our community and the reputation we’ve built for providing excellent care, we have to do minimal marketing to keep the practice thriving.

One challenge we face in our remote location is hiring. While we have excellent staff, many whose tenure exceeds mine, it’s difficult in a small town to find an experienced OD to join the practice. Not only is our local applicant pool small; it’s difficult to find doctors who want to relocate to an area so remote (my wife says we live in the middle of nowhere but halfway to everywhere). When one of my brothers decided to scale back his hours earlier this year, we found ourselves in need of another OD and turned to VSP Vision for assistance.  

We’ve had a partnership with VSP for a long time, appreciating the value and quality of their products and the ability VSP patients have to maximize their benefits with us. In our rural location, being part of the VSP network helps patients find us and know they can get the most from their benefits at our practice. Our participation in VSP Premier Edge offers us additional benefits that support the practice and our patients, and we recently moved to the Platinum level to receive even more benefits simply for doing what we’d already been doing. 

One of the many benefits of Premier Edge is complimentary recruiting and hiring support through Premier Edge Career Support. We reached out to Premier Edge Career Support with our hiring need, and in a relatively short time they sent us a candidate who happened to be exactly what we were looking for. Within a month, we had made the hire and Dr. Dana Spearin joined our team. She fits in perfectly with our family and brings new expertise that benefits the practice and our patients. It was such a simple process, taking very little time and no additional cost—I would highly recommend this resource to other practices looking to hire an OD.

Over the years, I’ve wondered what it would be like to practice in a big city or somewhere other than the town where I’ve lived all my life. But As Eye See It, there’s something pretty special about spending every day surrounded by family, working together to improve the lives of the people in our community. It’s home, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.