Smarter Spending For Eye Care Clinics

We talk with Dr. Cynthia Matosian about the leadership moves that keep eye care practices sustainable when costs rise and reimbursements fall. We dig into building patient-first culture, learning the business skills most clinicians never get taught, and using smarter purchasing to protect margin and reinvest in the team. 
• planning a thoughtful transition from clinical work to a second career chapter 
• building a patient-centric culture through weekly mission-driven staff training 
• closing the business knowledge gap with admin-side education and mentorship 
• mastering revenue cycle management and reviewing financials consistently 
• rolling out automation and software one platform at a time 
• investing in staff tools and professional development to boost retention 
• defining the practice administrator as the connector between physicians and staff 
• creating safe space for staff to surface bottlenecks and pain points 
• making purchasing decisions based on measurable outcomes and shared results 
• using a group purchasing organization to lower costs on common supplies and services 
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content. I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for Eye Care Leaders. You can find information about that at www.seasoned-advice.com. 

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This episode is brought to you by Seasoned Advice HR, where I help eye care clinics to hire, retain, and manage better — helping you get Better Results Through People. Learn more at seasoned-advice.com. 

Contact me directly at mike@seasoned-advice.com 

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Leadership Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Greetings and welcome to iCare Leadership Live. This is the podcast for iCare leaders who want to level up their leadership, create better cultures, and improve the financial results of their clinics. Now, let's join the show. Welcome to iCare Leadership Live. My guest today is Dr. Cynthia Matosian. Dr. Matosian, thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Thank you so much for inviting me, Mike. I'm really looking forward to this live program with you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

You know, me too. I love, I just love talking to interesting uh people that are doing interesting things, and you fit into that category. And so you are the CEO of GP Optho, and we're going to talk about what GP Optho is in a minute, but I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about your background and how you came, what is it that you're doing now and how you came to be doing that?

Building A Patient-Centric Practice

SPEAKER_00 1:03

That's a long and very circuitous journey, like many of us have in medicine. Very few of us have a very direct trajectory from point A to point B. I started ophthalmology and I was very determined to have a very patient-centric practice night. My focus always was on staff training in order to deliver a better patient experience with every patient on every encounter. Actually, that was one of a section of our mission statement, which we reread every week during our staff meetings, during our staff training sessions. So I started Matosian i Associates and continued to grow. We ended up with three different locations in two states, Pennsylvania, which is where I live, and New Jersey. And we had about 14 to 16 physicians, each doing a different subspecialty within ophthalmology and optometry. We pretty much had cornea, glaucoma, you know, cataract, oculoplastics retina, all the different subspecialties represented. And after doing this for 36 years and being involved in clinical trials and being a KOL, talking on behalf of different pharma and medical device companies at different national and regional meetings, I decided it was time to consider retirement from direct patient care. So the planning started about five years before the intended date. And I stayed on for a few years thereafter, cutting my hours back and back during that period of time. At that point, just doing interventional dry eye. I had stopped doing surgery. And finally, it was time for me to walk away from direct patient care. No regrets, because I had the time and I had the built-in kind of runway to wrap my heart and my brain around me, no longer delivering direct patient care, which I loved and loved doing it with all my passion for 36 years. But it was time to close one chapter and open

Retirement Planning And Chapter Two

SPEAKER_00 4:03

another. Now, what I call what I'm doing is chapter two.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

I love it, chapter two. Well, what so tell us about chapter two. What are the hallmarks of chapter two and what's got you excited right now?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Well, chapter two is something very different. Clearly, no surgery and no direct patient care. So, right there, there's a lot of built-in pliability in my schedule. I can work out every day, I don't start my day so early, dashing off to the OR like in the past. And I identified several kind of unmet needs towards the latter part of my direct patient care career. And I said, again, planning in advance, once I retire, I'm going to focus on these two specific areas.

Why GP Optho Exists

SPEAKER_00 4:58

The first one is I realize the cost of doing business in ophthalmology and optometry is really escalating. And our reimbursements, if we rely we rely exclusively on commercial and Medicare, Medicaid payments, of course, they're going down. So that kind of cost of business going up, reimbursements going down, was leaving very little kind of profit margin for practices to be able to operate the way they used to. So they had to figure out a different way of operating smarter and in a kind of more concise way. And I said one way to do that is to start a group purchasing organization or GPO for short. And for me, I like simplicity. I just call it GP op though. I took the O and changed it to op though. So GPOP though, where we negotiate on behalf of our members better pricing at discounted rates for products and services that all of us pretty much use, whether they are copy paper from staples or scrubs from different scrub companies like Figs and Cherokee and Gray's Anatomy, to very specific ophthalmic devices like brooder products or iTrace products or gloves and sutures and things like that, punctal plugs, amniotic membranes. So the gamut is very wide. Some are very specific to ophthalmology and optometry, and some are actually subspecialty agnostic, like copiers and printers and credit card processing fees. So as a practice administrator or an office manager, you could really tap in to GP op. Membership is free for all doctors, MDs, DOs, and ODs, and free for the office staff of those physicians as well. Because I want it to be inclusive. No hurdles. And also if you belong to another GPO, it's okay. You can still join ours and take advantage of the products and services we have at a discount, perhaps that the other GPO to which you belong may not have. So we're very inclusive. And you know, this way you are actually saving money on every transaction in those different categories. And of course, over months, over a year, that's going to really make a big difference to the practices bottom line. So that's why I started GP out though. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Well, yeah, that's, you know, I'm I'm a fan of everything that you just said because, you know, we want, you know, we want to take care of patients, right? You want to take care of patients. You want your clients uh to be able to help their patients and stay profitable and sustainable and to be able to train and do all the awesome things that that a great practice needs to be able to do. You need to have you need to have financial strength to be able to do that. I'm interested here because going back to your journey, you really built a large clinical business there, it sounds like. And, you know, I'm wondering, you know, what are some things that you learned like through that process about what does it take to build a robust clinical operation that is sustainable and that you know the community recognizes as a as a great place to get their eye care

Admin Skills Doctors Must Learn

SPEAKER_01 9:05

needs met. You I'm sure there's some things you picked up along the way.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

I did. It's not easy, and they aren't always skills that we were taught, Mike, in medical school or residency. For example, financial education is not part of the curriculum in ophthalmology residency programs or fellowships, nor is it in medical school. So I had to learn all of that on my own. I joined AAO and ASCRS, and fortunately, both of those organizations have arms for administrators. You know, it's called ASOA, and there are different acronyms where practice administrators and managers teach very specific skills for running a practice. So I used to go to these meetings, and instead of going to the clinical medical, surgical side, I started taking a lot of courses on the admin side. And it's really through other administrators and office managers that I started to learn the skill of running the business of ophthalmology. I also took other courses to build my leadership skills, to hone in on my communication skills. And all of these help the person who is at the helm or at the head of any organization be able to better communicate with everybody. And creating a team is really what it's all about because nobody can succeed on their own. It really takes an entire teamwork, a whole village, from the newest hired technician or front desk receptionist all the way to the busiest surgeon. We all have to swim in the same direction so that we can deliver a patient-centric, as I mentioned earlier, experience. And it's really those experiences that patients remember. And when they leave, that's what they're going to tell their family members, their friends, maybe on social media, you know, post something on their personal social media channels. And you want it to be as positive a reflection of their experience as possible.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

You know, you touched on a I love, I have to stop and say, I love that you would attend talks at the practice on the practice administration side because you probably learned a lot of things there that helped you to build what you built there. And it's very rare to see clinicians in those sessions. Occasionally you will, but it's not common. But that is the differentiator, I think. So it's now it's making me wonder. So if you were talking to other physicians out, let's say there's a physician out there listening, and they want to grow, they want to have a strong clinic and they and they want to build something that they can be proud of. Uh, I don't know. What is one thing that you think sticks in your mind that maybe a lot of physicians don't think about when it comes to building a strong, robust clinical operation that as a physician, something that you can do to help make sure that that happens, you know, beyond being just a good physician, you know.

Tools That Win Staff Buy-In

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Well, there are so many fabulous physicians, but they may not have the skill set to grow and run a practice profitably and well, like a well-oiled machine. Number one, I would say take courses on the admin side. They're available. You can attend them, you know, regionally and of course nationally. The second thing is that there are very specific skills that we have to learn. For example, I really mastered revenue cycle management. I learned about how billing was done, what it meant not to send a clean bill in, the consequences of that, and the delay and payment. I would review the financials on a monthly basis along with our CFO and the head biller, for example. Also, I think becoming aware of tools out there to help make the lives of your staff easier and kind of more automated, whether they were software platforms, different AI platforms, uh, call answering systems, recall systems, whatever it might be. I was always learning about them, trying to find out about them, and then integrating them in kind of a cadence that made sense to the practice without overwhelming people. You can't kind of introduce all kinds of new things at once. That equals chaos. But one platform at a time, I would introduce, for example, a recall system. That was so helpful. It took away us manually doing it, and it resulted in so many people returning back to our practice who, for whatever reason, had stopped coming, you know, and had been like two years or three years, or different billing systems to help track those who, for example, were tardy or you know, something was overdue. And whatever it was, I tried to make it easier for my staff. They loved that and they respected that. It made me be on their side, and as a result, they wanted to work harder to do the best they could and get for this team to blossom and succeed as an entity.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

This show is sponsored by Seasoned Advice HR Services, where I help eye care businesses to make more money and save more money by hiring better, retaining better, and reducing your HR risk. If you would like an HR assessment or ongoing HR support, please reach out to me at seasoned-advice.com. I love it. We, you know, I talk about discretionary effort a lot. And what you just said is a description of how you can show your team that, hey, I'm willing to invest in a tool that will make your job easier. And because I really believe that employees want to do a good job. They love being part of ophthalmology. And if we can help them do their jobs better with exactly what you were talking about, then they're all in on it because they want to go home at the end of the day and put their head on their pillow and say, I made a contribution today, and I get to work with the best tools, you know, because Dr. Matosian provided those tools to me, you know. So my hat's off to you for that. I'm a big fan.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

It also made them feel valued, Mike. Because they knew that I was investing in their department. I was always looking out for them to make their work, let's say, less fragmented, more seamless, things like that. And they knew that when they went to meetings, I encouraged them to go to meetings. We paid for their training to become a certified COAs, COT, COMTs, and so forth. And then when they would go and compare what we did at Metosi and I to other practices, they became aware: wow, we have all these tools and all these processes in place that is makes us very unique. They come back even prouder than before they left.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, that's amazing. And that's another dimension that I think physicians and practice administrators would be smart to think about, which is how are you investing not just in tools, which is important, but how are you investing in your people? And one of the things that we learned from experts on managing Generation Z, our youngest, you know, members of our workforce, is they want to be invested in. They want to be taught new skills. And that when they start to think about working somewhere else, is when they feel like they're not growing anymore. So I love the direction that we're going here on this conversation.

Practice Administrators As The Glue

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Another question that I'm thinking of is you certainly throughout your time of growing Matossi and I, you worked with different leaders. You talked about CFO, practice administrators, and things like that. You know, if there's a practice administrator listening or someone who's a leader in a clinical healthcare business, and they want to be of service to their of their physician and their owners, what are some what's some advice that you would give to a practice administrator out there, maybe a young practice administrator who wants to make a good impression? What advice would you give to make that working relationship effective?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I think the practice administrator is the glue that holds the whole practice together. They are kind of the cement between the entire staff and the physician group. And they're so important because they're the filling. And so they have to be able to communicate with both the physician team as well as the staff. My recommendation would be is often the staff know exactly what the problems are, they can identify pain points, they know where bottlenecks are happening and why, or where things could be made smoother. They may not know the solution, but they can identify the problems. If you give them a safe space without judgment to listen to them and give them that opportunity to express without consequence what their opinions are of where the bottlenecks are and how it can be, let's say, improved, I think you're going to learn so much. And then you can bring those points to the physician team. And together with available tools and available and constantly improving technological devices, a solution can be found for whatever identified problems have been prioritized.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

You know, I feel like Dr. Matosian, that you and I are mind-melded together somehow because I recently I recently wrote a blog post about this very topic, which is involving your team so you can transform your practice and ways of engaging them. And so, you know, you you have learned these lessons, and I love that you're sharing them here with us. I wanted to say for anyone listening live that if you have a question for Dr. Matosian or if you just want to say hi, I love it when people just say hi. Drop that into the comment section there of LinkedIn, say hi or ask a question. We will see your comment and we'll talk, we can answer any questions that you share. We'd love to be able to do that. But it just always warms my heart and it makes me excited when a physician who's been successful realizes the power of their team, you know, and and the power of tapping into their team. So I'm I'm really excited to hear you

Purchasing With Measurable Outcomes

SPEAKER_01 21:41

say that. You know, one of the things that and that you talked about when you were talking about GP Optho is the power of purchasing. You know, when you think about the members of GP Optho and what you've been able to do to assist them, what are some of the things that you've heard from Practice leaders and physicians as far as the importance of purchasing in their in their practice to be able to help them build a sustainable clinic.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Obviously, every penny counts, and that's how you have to view any purchase you make. Because if you spend it on product A or service B, you're not going to be able to then spend it on DE, whatever those options may be. So it's a very laser-focused decision that has to be made again by the team to decide where money needs to be spent in order to have an impact, a result. And that result needs to be measurable. It may be a reputation management system. So you can see how many more five-star ratings you're getting compared to prior to implementing a software like that. Or it could be is the throughput of the patient decreasing by a certain number of minutes because you've implemented a different scheduling system or whatever it might be. So it has to have measurable outcomes. And then it's the role of management to share the positive outcomes back with a team so they know that these new things that they worked hard to implement, to learn, especially if it's a new EMR system that can be terribly disruptive to the practice, is yielding the results that were intended. So that kind of boosts everybody's morale. And you can then track the improvements, whether it's in patient numbers see or number of procedures performed or the number of happy reviews that you're getting compared to before.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah. It is so important to have good tools and make strategic investments. Absolutely. I had a career as a personal chef for a little while, which is an I love that. And not a well-known fact about me. But one of the things I learned when I was a personal chef was I had to make strategic investments, right? And almost always when I when I made those investments, they had a good return because what I chose to invest in were tools that would help me move quicker and faster. And I use those in my business today, use that same philosophy, meaning use make strategic investments to save me time so that I can communicate better, be there for my clients and my customers. And there are so many.com.

How To Join GP Optho

SPEAKER_00 25:53

As long as you spell opt though right with two H's, you know, that's always a challenge. So it's gp o p-h o dot com. And once you go there, you can see all of our business partners. They are business vendors. You can look them up in two ways. A to Z is one, or by categories. Let's say you're looking for something related to IT, you can pick that, and then there are categories, names within that category or A to Z. And then my personal GPAphtho email address, please contact me, is Cynthia at gpalphtho.com. Again, membership is free. You can just join by clicking the button. It says join now or join here. And there's one form you fill out online. It's very simple. And thereafter, you can start looking and browsing and exploring what we have to offer. It is limitless. The amount of products and services that we have. We're adding more and more on a regular basis. So my advice to any office manager, physician, or practice administrator would be log in to GPOpto and look around and see what is it that we are offering before you make a purchase. Because often we can do it at a lower cost and usually with an added value package that GP Optho members get, whereas direct clients may not have access to those benefits.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Wonderful. Well, I will I'll put your contact information into the show notes for the show. And thank you for joining me here today.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Thank you so much for inviting me. I love this program and lots of luck to you.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Awesome. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Thank you.

Final Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Well, that brings this episode of iCare Leadership Live to a conclusion. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content. I promise to bring you more guests and content to help make you a better iCare clinical leader. I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for iCare Leaders. You can find information about that at seasoned advice.com. Now go out there and lead with confidence.