The Medical Practice Playbook
The Story of Middletown Eye Care:
How our Private Practice has Succeeded in an Era of Medical Practice Consolidation in the 21st Century
by Frank Burns, MD & David Strickland, MD
‘ Beginnings’ by Frank Burns, MD
The story of how our private practice began goes back to 1992 when I joined an ophthalmologist who was in solo private practice following completion of my ophthalmology residency at the University of Louisville. He subsequently sold the practice in 1994 to a larger multi-specialty ophthalmology practice which I joined as an employed physician. In 1996, I decided to start a solo practice after becoming disillusioned with how the practice was treating various issues. The main impetus for starting my own practice was to gain the ultimate decision-making in treating both patients and employees.
Starting a private practice from scratch was an extremely daunting task in 1996 and remains even more so today. Opening the practice came with several significant challenges. The location of the two offices that I opened was primarily dictated by the restrictive covenant I had to operate with, after leaving the larger practice. After looking at several locations, I elected to open an office on Dixie Highway next to Southend Medical Associates, a large family practice group.
I was able to establish an excellent relationship with them and that practice became one of my primary referral sources in the first years of my solo practice.
The second location chosen was in Middletown. I initially rented space from an optometrist and then, after a year, I built out the office space we still use. The office has undergone two expansions over the years. The first was to accommodate the growth of the practice, and the second in 2020 to allow the addition of my partner, Dr. David Strickland. The opening of the Middletown location turned out to be quite advantageous as, to this day, there are no other ophthalmology practices located in the Middletown area. The growth of the population in the Middletown area has significantly helped the growth of our practice.
During the early years of my private practice, I continued to prefer working as a solo practitioner even with the many challenges associated with practicing independently. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were quite a few ophthalmologists in the city who had private solo prac-
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