Before the internet most people found an Eye Doctor near me by looking into the yellow pages. Nowadays most people are using a search engine and asking for an Eye Doctor near me. The yellow pages search was nice because an Eye Doctor in Collinsville, an Eye Doctor in Owasso, an Eye Doctor in Oologah, an Eye Doctor in Claremore, and an Eye Doctor in Nowata would all be found there. The Eye Doctor near me search doesn’t always yield as many options. Especially if we are looking for an Eye Doctor near me now because of a medical need. That is because the office may not even be open and force us to search through quite a few that may say they are but are not. Next, the Optometrist near me search may not include all of the Eye Doctors that are close by. There are five things to look for when searching for an Eye Doctor near me or an Optometrist near me.
- Small town Eye Doctor or big city Eye Doctor
- How busy is the vision clinic
- What selection of frames does the eye care center have
- What hours is the Eye Doctor open
- Is the Eye Doctor in network with my vision insurance
Eye Dr Near Me search background
Before we can dive into those five concepts we need to know what a search engine is looking for when you search for Eye Dr near me walk in or Optometrist near me. These listing that will show up are mainly based on your geographic location. However, if the eye care center has not updated its information or properly geo tagged it’s location they may not show up.
This means you may not be getting a full list of the actual Optometrists in your area. While a search of Eye Doctor near me will also include the ophthalmologists near by, you may not be looking for a cataract surgeon or a strabismus surgeon. Therefore, some of those results may be worthless. Most ophthalmologists have very small selections of frames and focus most of their energy and resources towards surgery. After all it takes quite a few $200 glasses sales to equal the one $4,000 Lasik surgery.
So, if you are truly looking for glasses or contacts you may get a better result by searching for Optometrist near me instead of Eye Doctor near me. You could also search for the specific thing you are looking for like eye glasses near me or contacts near me.
Researching the Best Optometrist near me in Collinsville
Researching an Optometrist near me in Collinsville is harder than it should be in my opinion. With no Eye Doctor in Oologah, Eye Doctor in Nowata, Eye Doctor in Sperry, or Eye Doctor in Talala most people living there come to us at Collinsville Primary Eye Care for their eye exams. We are currently the only Collinsville eye care facility There are currently seven Owasso eye care facilities after Dr. Hinkle and Dr. Cash closed their Owasso vision center in 2019. With eight options for Owasso vision clinics and Collinsville vision clinics you would think there would be more information available to the area about eye care options.
I plan to continue to add more information to our blog and to our Facebook page to help get more information about the eye care options for the residents of Collinsville. Plus, this will allow the residents in the area to become more familiar with the latest technology and advancements in the industry.
Busy vision clinic or sluggish vision clinic
First, you will want to find out is the Collinsville vision clinic or Owasso vision clinic busy. So, my advice is to start with reviews and see who has a large number of reviews. Keep in mind here that Collinsville Primary Eye Care became a business July 1, 2020, so we will not have nearly as many reviews in August of 2020 as most of the other vision clinics in the area. That doesn’t mean we are a sluggish clinic at all. It just means we are a new clinic. Now, this isn’t my first clinic to run either. For some more information on what to expect as time progresses with reviews you can look at my other clinic that is an Eye Doctor in Broken Arrow vision clinic.
So, like I said it shouldn’t have nearly as many reviews as some Doctors near me that have been around for decades. Because after all this concept can unfairly punish the newer vision clinic because a clinic that has gotten 210 reviews in 3 years or 70 reviews a year is probably more active than a vision clinic that has gotten 300 reviews in 10 years or 30 reviews a year on average. So, try and look at just the reviews in the last month or two to help judge. That will give you an idea if the vision clinic has made a strong enough impression to get patients to take time out of their day to give a review.
Does the eye doctor near me have a staff photo
Some eye care centers will post a staff photo. The idea here is a large number of employees may mean a busy vision center to justify the large staff. Be leery using this as a major gauge though. I have heard of vision centers asking some employees to bring in their significant other for that “staff” photo knowing it will make them look like they have more employees than they truly do.
With all of that in mind, the busy vision center is a double edged sword because you don’t want to be at the vision center all day because they are slow. You also don’t want to be herded through like cattle. I’ll give some insight on how to tell the mentality of the Optometrist near me later in this article, but this should allow for a quick guess on if they are a premier optical center or an average vision center.
Frame options
Having lots of frame options is a must in today’s time. With the ability to order frames online and to quickly see what other vision centers around Claremore, Sperry, Oologah, Owasso, and Collinsville carry makes it important for the vision clinic to carry a wide selection. So, a search for sunglasses near me or eye glasses near me may help shed light here. If the same vision clinic shows up for sunglasses near me as Optometrist near me that is a god sign.
It is funny here to me because the industry has always set the ideal number of frames to carry as the amount you would expect to sell in about 6 months. If the Eye Doctor follows that concept you may be able to roughly guess how busy they are. In other words, if they have 200 frames for you to choose from they may be seeing 10% of the patients a vision center with 2,000 frames is seeing.
While I know the benchmark of carrying as many frames and I would sell in 6 months I tend to carry more frames than that. The reason is because I have never been in a vision center that wasn’t growing at a rapid pace. The first vision center I was in charge of grew by over 20% that year. The second vision center I was in charge of grew by 40% that year. So, I know that with extreme growth numbers like that I must have more eyeglasses for people to buy than what traditional vision clinics would carry. After all the traditional vision clinic grows by 5% a year.
The optical shop concept
I want a large selection because I want people to be happy with how they will look for the next year. Eyeglasses and Sunglasses are sitting right on our face as a main focal point. Thus, these accessories are very important and this is an accessory that very rarely do people change more often than one time a year.
A quick way to find out if the eye care near me is engaged in his or her optical shop is by looking at the pictures of the vision clinic on Facebook or Google. If there is little or no pictures it lends the question of if the vision clinic has anything to show off. So, if you are unable to find any pictures you might be able to assume they do not carry very many glasses. It could also mean the glasses they carry are mainly non brand named. I will be getting a 360 degree tour of our vision clinic in the near future. So, make sure to like our Facebook page to get that update.
Contact lens near me
With dang near a hundred different contact lenses out on the market it has brought some challenges. The first challenge most vision clinics have is the sheer number of contacts they have to carry. Each fitting set contains somewhere around 1,000 contact lenses. So, if we carry a fitting set for 50 contact lens brands we have a room with about 50,000 contact lenses in it. That has led some vision clinics to only carry a couple brands because that space is valuable. I tend to personally try and carry a very large selection and try to get as close to all contact lenses as possible. The reason is that I have not ran a vision clinic that hasn’t had double digit growth every year.
Convenient hours
I always hate it when I try and go to the Doctor and they have what I call “catch me if you can” hours. I am talking about a Doctor that is open Monday from 1-5. They are closed Tuesday. Then, they are open 8- 5 on Wednesday and Thursday. Lastly, they are open 8-2 on Friday. You need a dang chart of the lunar cycle to determine if you can go pick up your glasses. I hate it. Who wouldn’t because then you know you must always call before you go because who knows if they are open. I mean you Google the business and Google even says that the hours are weird and you need to call before going. When Google tells you good luck you are on your own. That is a big red flag.
With those crazy hours it always makes me wonder if the Doctor wants to be at work or even likes being an Eye Doctor. Know, I understand a large family may also have outside obligations, but you can always hire another helpful Eye Doctor. So, if they aren’t wanting to hire another Optometrist is it because they don’t want to run the business. This is again a red flag. After all, a non-engaged Eye Doctor or business owner is probably not the best Eye Doctor near me. They may still be able to provide a good eye exam near me, but will they provide the best overall experience?
The BEST eye doctor near me
What can be done to determine if the Eye Doctor near me is the best? How do you even judge who the best Eye Doctor is? I mean pick from the following list which is most important
- smart
- funny
- charitable
- kind
- good listener
- family oriented
- good communicator
- honest
- good looking
It is hard to find someone that is the best at everything on that list. I mean aside from me, but that was probably obvious.
Things to try to differentiate the BEST Eye Doctor Near Me
When you look at the list of Eye Doctors in Owasso and Optometrists in Collinsville you will see similarities. Almost all graduated from the same school and with some kind of award and honors. The reason is there is only 1 Optometry school in Oklahoma and actually there are none in Arkansas or Kansas. Also, these Eye Doctors are overachievers and won’t settle for bad grades or being “average” academically. So, while the classes are hard they will always push harder to make sure they are making good grades.
When it comes to community involvement most do something. So, which is better the Eye Doctor that reads to the elementary school kids and does some fun experiments with them or the Eye Doctor the goes to the nursing home to adjust glasses and make sure the residents vision needs are taken care of. That is an impossible thing to determine which is more important and impactful.
Eye Exam Near Me
Sometimes what we really need is someone that can take metal out of our eye. Or maybe we have a scratch on our eye and really need that fixed quickly. Optometrists have extensive knowledge in how to fix these along with many other eye related issues. So, finding someone that is open and can get you in will be the main factor in this. So a quick Eye Doctor near me medical search will get you to someone who can fix the pain for you.
Personality is the key
That is why I think a personality that matches what you wan is the determining factor. Try and find videos of the Eye Doctor explaining different concepts. Read some articles that they created. If you feel like they are explaining things the way you would like them to explain the concepts give them a try. If they have passion about a topic that concerns you that is a plus.
Some people are good actors and can fake that passion. So, try and find more than one video or article to see if there is consistency. If they are consistently acting a certain way on their Facebook or YouTube videos then that is probably the type of Eye Doctor they truly are. By now most Eye Doctors should have a video or two explaining something on Social Media. Here is a link to my YouTube channel. I am just getting it started, but I will be adding more videos to it regularly.
Now, if they aren’t present on any social media platforms, don’t have an active website, and you can’t find any pictures other than the one Google provided during a drive by. You may be able to assume they are behind on technology in their vision clinic also. Now some instruments haven’t changed in 100 years, but some have changed in the last few. It still surprises me that some Eye Doctors do the “puff of air” test. As a student that graduated in 2013, they didn’t even teach us how to use the “puff of air” machine. They showed us the machine basically said old technology. If you want to learn how it works buy it used from someone. Then, make them teach you how to use it.
Eye Doctor in network with my insurance
Finding an eye doctor in network with my insurance should be an easy part. However, recently some things have changed to make it more challenging. Logic would suggest that every eye doctor would want to take every insurance because that would give them the largest patient base. That actually isn’t the case. Especially with the way some insurances are controlling the Optometrist.
In network with all vision insurances
I am not in network with every vision insurance and the reason is quite simple. Some insurance companies try and control too many steps in the process. There is one insurance that I am currently in network with that I am planning to drop in the near future. The reason is that I have had to work with 3 very upset patients over the last year because of that insurance.
This insurance company tells me exactly who I can get my lenses from and exactly what the lens design will be. This means I can’t choose a quality lens design for my patient. This also means I can’t pull my business from that vendor if they underperform. This allows that vendor to make numerous mistakes with no risk. I have no control of the quality of the product or how quickly I can get it for my patient. This leads to an understandably frustrated patient. If you are having a hard time finding an eye doctor in network with my insurance the problem may be the vision insurance my be trying to control the eye doctor near me. The “big three” insurances in the area that we are in network with include SoonerCare, VSP, and Eyemed.
Really in network with my vision insurance
The other thing that can happen is they claim to be in network with your vision insurance. However, after the exam they inform you they actually are not. The eye doctor has you pay the full price of the eye exam, glasses, or contact lenses. Then you submit an out of network claim with your vision insurance. While this is doable it is fairly annoying to jump through this extra hoop. It also leads the question of if the broken arrow vision center is willing to lie about this to make a buck what else will they lie about. An easy way to find out if someone is in network with my insurance is to go to your insurances websites. Then, search for the broken arrow vision center or Tulsa eye doctor.
Collinsville vision clinic or Tulsa vision clinic
As the owner of a smaller town Collinsville Vision clinic. I had the following question from my childhood. Should you avoid the small towns that may be behind on the times and drive to the big towns. Because supposedly these big towns compete more and will give you a better eye doctor and better selection. There has been a recent movement to shop local which suggests to stay in small towns.
Old concepts from my childhood
Next, a concept that I heard when I was a kid was that you always wanted to go to the “bigger” towns to have any medical procedure done. The idea was that those Doctors were better trained. They would have had to compete more in order to survive in the big city. Whereas the smaller town Doctors didn’t have to be as “good” because there was no competition. I can’t say if that was a valid concept 40 years ago. I can say that is not the concept today.
With the internet and vision insurances you don’t get much change in price from one town to the next. As for the quality eye care part of that equation, I think any Eye Doctor that has a busy practice is probably great. I mean you can have poor performing Optometrist in Tulsa just as easy as you could have a poor performing Optometrist in Nowata.
Lastly, your Vision insurance will set the price on eyeglasses. That means you will pay pretty much the exact same price regardless of where you go. This assumes the Eye Doctor is in network with your insurance. Typically going once a year to the Optometrist means very little time on a yearly basis to spend researching. Therefore, my recommendation is to find an eye doctor near me but be willing to commute. An hour long drive may not be so bad one time a year. If you do a little research on the internet you should be able to find a quality Eye Doctor within a short drive. It is probably best to go to someone a little farther away that you like than someone close that you dislike.
Conclusion about an Optometrist near me
There are quite a few ways to help find the best Optometrist near me. The key is to do a little research and find someone that you think will fit your needs best. If you try them and don’t like them keep searching. You will eventually find the best Optometrist near me for you.
