Thomas and Vasvi Babu met while both attended Illinois College of Optometry, did their residencies
together at the Illinois Eye Institute, and just opened their fifth location of the 20/20 Eye Care Center
they founded together.
PHOENIX, Ariz.—With the addition of its newest location, an acquisition of an existing practice in Glendale, Ariz., 20/20 Image Eye Centers now operates five locations in the vicinity of Phoenix, Ariz.
The small but growing regional optical chain was started 18 years ago when the husband-and-wife team of optometrists, Thomas and Vasvi Babu, had their first child and decided they wanted to slowly wean themselves off the corporate optometry jobs they had while gradually building their own private practice.
“Our philosophy is to work on the
practice rather than in the practice,”
said Thomas Babu, OD. The two met while attending Illinois College of Optometry, and then they were both residents together at the Illinois Eye Institute. After graduating in 1993, their chief of staff helped them load up their U-Haul and move to Scottsdale, Ariz., to begin their careers.
While both worked corporate optometry jobs to make ends meet, they simultaneously opened their own practice cold in a place they described as “one of the worst possible locations ever,” a 90-square-foot space on the top floor of a medical building. With their baby in tow, they worked their start-up in the evenings and on weekends. Patients were attracted by word-of-mouth and through newspaper advertising in those pre-internet days. At times they even served as “surrogate parents” to the couple’s baby, Vasvi said.
Things improved a couple of years later when they were able to buy a practice in a better location from a retiree, merge the two and begin practicing in the new space. Another acquisition in Chandler, Ariz., followed, and Vasvi was able to quit her day job while Tom continued working at his corporate position.
The timing was unfortunate, however, because they closed on the purchase of the Chandler practice on Sept. 9, 2011, just two days before 9/11, when Vasvi said “everything stopped, and I had already given up my other job. Everyone was paralyzed. It’s usually chaotic when you take over a practice, but it was not chaotic, so we had anxiety over that.”
Business gradually improved, systems were created and nurtured, and today, 20/20 Image Eye Centers operates five Arizona locations in Chandler, Fountain Hills, Glendale, Scottsdale and Tempe.
Tom describes the group as “each practice revolving around its associate doctor. We don’t want it revolving around us,” he said, explaining that “every associate has a sense of ownership. When it succeeds, they do better. If I do well, we all do well, and vice versa.”
He further explained that they strive to have this attitude permeate the entire team. “Everybody looks at key performance indicators, the opticians, the front desk, the technicians,” he said. “Every position has its own little business with goals to attain and accountability. This makes for an efficient team and keeps other staff members from skating,” Tom said, referring to the working relationships experienced by Seal Team 6 as those he’d like to emulate with his staff.
“Our goal is not so much to do start-ups
but to make sure we are available to
private practices looking to exit out,”
said Vasvi Babu, OD. It took a little longer than they had hoped to add this most recent acquisition in Glendale, because before they could even consider adding any more locations they first wanted to replace the software they had been using and allow the staff time to adjust to the new system. “It was a big step after 15 years with the same software,” Tom said, referring to the transition as “a complete nightmare. But we had to have the systems in place to be able to start adding locations.”
Now, they’ve again begun “looking to acquire more practices” as long as they are “right for our culture,” added Tom, who described it as a “hybrid” that combines medical and optical. “Certain practices are medical with optical treated as an afterthought, while others are nearly 100 percent optical with little medical. We are closer to 50/50. We have two businesses here, the retail optical business and the medical business. They stand alone but have a huge overlap.”
Keeping both sides running requires advanced technology. For example, to keep the schedule full, 20/20 Image Eye Centers relies on Everseat, an app that enables patients to take advantage of last-minute cancellations while helping the practice ensure that unexpected openings are filled.
In addition, other advanced technologies in use at 20/20 Image Eye Centers’ locations include the Optomap for retinal imaging and Ortho-K Corneal Refractive Therapy. Tom told dba that using the Optomap has reversed the sequence of the optical exam. “We used to do the retinal exam last, but with the Optomap the first thing we do is examine the retina with the patient,” he said, referring to the fact that they broadcast the retinal image to a large flat screen in the exam room. “They’ve had this done before with another doctor, but they’re not presenting it that way,” Tom said about the flat screen TV. “Presentation is important. This is a better relationship builder.”
About Ortho-K therapy, which enables a patient to improve their eyesight by wearing a contact lens overnight to reshape their cornea, Tom said, “It hasn’t hit critical mass yet, but we bring it up ad nauseum. Within an hour we can get younger, low myopic patients down about three lines.” In this case, “seeing is believing,” he said. “When Mom can see her kid’s vision get better in an hour, that’s when they get it.”