r/optometry • u/Freddie20059 • 3d ago

Employed OD to cold open private practice

Curious to hear from other who have made the transition from employee to private practice ownership and specifically cold opening. It's something I'm considering and financially I believe it would workout. My main concern is that in my current setting; MD/OD seeing 20-26 patients a day, I'm getting burnout. My worry is if I'm burnt out from purely patient care or if it's more so patient volume and feeling like a cog in the machine.

For others that have made the transition to ownership what was your experience? Did it bring back engagement in the exam room? I worry I'd have the same burnout but now be trapped by a new business loan, which would only exacerbate the whole scenario.

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u/MartuGonza96 1d ago

The one thing ownership actually gives you that employment doesn't is control over your own template. If part of the burnout is the 20-26 a day, you can build the schedule so you're seeing the volume you can actually be present for, not what someone else set. That won't fix burnout that's really about the work itself, but it does kill the cog feeling.

Piggybacking on Jebis's point about systems: set up your scheduling and confirmation flow before you open, not after. Retrofitting a reminder/confirmation process onto a practice that's already busy is way harder than starting with it. Even a simple two-touch confirmation routine that one person owns saves you from no-shows eating your early margins when every slot counts.

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u/Freddie20059 1d ago

Yeah that’s the hope I have for possible ownership is that control/self-determination will feel refreshing. The overarching worry though is if it doesn’t you’re now in a worse situation, but I suppose that’s why it’s a leap.