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Welcome to Optometry Simplified.

In this biweekly newsletter, I've curated the best resources to help you grow personally and professionally.

My mission is to find what's best for my patients and my practice.

Here's what I've found...

Links I Liked

Should you bill the vision plan or the medical insurance?

Chris Wroten, OD gives some practical advice on this common dilemma. Optometry Times​

How much hydroxychloroquine should our patients be taking?

Randall Thomas, OD helps us find the sweet spot in dosage and annual testing for our patients on hydroxychloroquine. Review of Optometry​

What is driving your patient's ocular surface disease?

Lisa Hornick, OD says test for etiologies and treat those drivers first and foremost for best DED management outcomes. Optometric Management​

Research I'm Reading

What have we learned in 25 years of prescribing SiHy contact lenses?

Some surprising and some not-so-surprising results of 25 years of SiHy contact lens availability. Optometry and Vision Science​

Is myopia control research too biased to believe?

Publication bias, when positive findings are more likely to be published than negative findings, resulting in an overestimate of the treatment effect, can be a problem when trying to separate science from hype. Is it happening in myopia? Contact Lens & Anterior Eye​

Which NPDR patients are most likely to progress to vision-threatening disease?

This paper identifies which subtype of NPDR is most likely to progress and which instruments are most effective for its identification. For an AI summary of the paper --> Perplexity.AI. For the full article --> Eye​

Deep Thoughts

Are you time-telling or clock-building?
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When I opened a second location, I thought I was scaling.
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In reality, I was doubling my workload.
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The systems weren’t ready, and I was (and still am) the bottleneck.
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That’s when the concept from Jim Collins hit me:
“Clock building, not time telling.”
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I was telling time—answering every question, solving every problem myself.
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But what I needed was a Practice Operating System—a way to build a clock that could tell time without me.
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So lately, I’ve been working on just that.
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I’m pulling from some classic systems books—ClockWork, Traction, Scaling Up—and crafting my own Practice Operating System.

Through this, I've found it helpful to separate "telling time" activities from "clockbuilding" activities.

Here is what it looks like when you are telling time:

• You answer every clinical question. Staff constantly asks, “What do you want to do for this dry eye/glaucoma patient?”—because there’s no protocol to follow.
• You personally onboard every new hire. There's no written system, so each new staff member gets a slightly different (and founder-dependent) training.
• You’re the only one who can handle “difficult” patients. Team members aren’t trained or equipped to de-escalate or educate, so you step in every time.
• Team members ask you before taking initiative. Even for things like calling a no-show or following up on referrals—because authority hasn’t been delegated.
• You carry the entire patient experience. Patients love you, not the practice. If you’re out, retention and reviews suffer.
• You handle all marketing decisions. Messaging, referral relationships, promotions—it’s all in your head or inbox.
• You keep your vision and goals to yourself. The team is just “doing their jobs,” not building toward something bigger together.
• You get frustrated that “nobody does it like you would.” Because there’s no documented standard or culture of feedback and improvement.

What about clock-building? What would that look like?

• Create and train around clinical protocols. Build step-by-step care guides for dry eye, glaucoma, AMD, etc., so patient care is consistent no matter which OD or tech is involved.
• Document your standard operating procedures (SOPs). From frame ordering to insurance verification, build a playbook so the team doesn’t need to ask you every time.
• Build a values-based hiring and onboarding process. Use scorecards, 90-day plans, and cultural onboarding to make sure new hires succeed—without needing constant hand-holding.
• Develop a written patient journey. Design the entire experience—from the first phone call to check-out—so every team member knows how to deliver 5-star care.
• Use clinical dashboards and KPIs. Track medical visits, capture rates, testing utilization, etc.—so performance is measured by systems, not hunches.
• Set up weekly team huddles and monthly leadership meetings. Build a cadence for communication, improvement, and accountability.
• Share the vision regularly. Remind the team what we’re building, why it matters, and how their work contributes to something meaningful.

So are you telling time or clock building for your team?

Practice Performance Pick

Do you have a business strategy for your optical other than "sell more eyeglasses" or "increase capture rate?"

Alex Martin, OD created an excellent course called "Optical Business Strategy" my team and I are using to improve our frame turn, profitability, and capture rates.

For a sample of his advice, he wrote a great article about optical sales in a recent edition of Review of Optometric Business.

If you are serious about growing your optical, take the course. It will pay for itself and more. It provides great strategies for how to better manage inventory, improve profitability, and grow your optical sales team.

Can you do me a favor? If you found any of these resources helpful, share this newsletter with one of our colleagues!

See you in 2 weeks!

--Kyle Klute, OD, FAAO

1515 S 152 Avenue Circle, Omaha, Nebraska 68144
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