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November 11, 2024
MEDFORD – After 50 years at 309 E. Broadway Ave. in Medford, HealthView Eye Care Center has a new home – about 10 blocks away.
The eye care center moved to 353 N. 8th St. in October, which HealthView Owner Dr. Julie Thums said gives customers and employees some much-needed upgrades and more space, respectively.
“The original practice was started by Dr. Perry Arndt, and it was called Perry Arndt ODSC,” Practice Administrator Diane Solberg said. “He practiced out of a rented space in the Medford Clinic for several years – probably about two to three – until they built an office on Broadway in Medford, which is where we moved from.”
Solberg, who has been with HealthView for 38 years, said Arndt built the practice along with a dentist, so that was a shared office for about 47 years.
“The building was built new, but over time and growth, they did an addition and grew from one optometrist and three employees to two optometrists and about 10 employees,” she said. “Then, about 20 years ago, a second addition was added and the practice was grown to four optometrists and about 30 employees between our two locations – we have a location in Colby as well.”
Along with that growth and the need for more space, Thums said it was “simply time for a new building.”
“Our old building served us well for many years,” she said. “The additions and changes we made over time certainly accommodated our needs to some degree, but we just got to where we had no room for expansion.”
Thums said adding more equipment to the old building was no longer an option.
“We had too many employees working in small spaces and having to share desk space, and patient efficiency was starting to get compromised, especially adding more doctors and more doctor hours and more employees,” she said.
A vision for success
Thums said it was a dream of many HealthView employees – including herself – to build a new space, dating back at least a decade.
“We could all see it was needed, even 10 years back,” she said. “Things didn’t get real serious until about two years ago when we started actively looking more for properties, and that wasn’t easy in Medford – to find a space in the right location and have enough parking and building area.”
Thums said it took a while to find the right location.
“It was important to stay visible and be on kind of a main highway,” she said. “Only two main highways go through Medford, so we had to ensure we had enough acreage to have an adequate parking lot, and the space of the building itself was a challenge. There are a lot of businesses on those roads and not a lot of land available.”
Once the perfect location was found, Thums said HealthView spent probably another six months or more working with architects and designers “to make things perfect.”
“The official groundbreaking was April 30, and we opened the new location Oct. 15,” she said.
Let there be light
Timoly Brodhagen, marketing coordinator/technician at HealthView, said the new space has much more natural light – “a good thing for an eye care center.”
“With the old office, you’d come in (during the winter) in the morning and it was dark, and you’re in these dark rooms, testing eyes all day, and you leave and it was dark (outside),” she said. “So now with seeing the sun (in the new building), it’s pretty fantastic. It’s just better for overall well-being.”
Solberg said she also loves the natural light the new office brings.
“In the business of optometry, that’s important, especially in the retail side where patients are looking at eyewear – you need to have colors be true and natural,” she said.
The new space, Solberg said, also has a more efficient layout.
“We used to have a long walkway from the entrance back to the exam lanes because of the design and remodeling over the years – it wasn’t efficient,” she said. “Now it’s much more conducive for elderly patients or patients who need assistance with walking.”
Brodhagen said patients have also enjoyed the new space.
“They’re happy they’re not being funneled through this maze like they used to be,” she laughed.
Solberg said the parking problem the clinic had at the previous office has also been solved.
“At our old location, we didn’t have adequate parking between the dental office and our optometric clinic,” she said. “I think people are much happier about having more parking.”
Besides more natural light, more space and more parking, Thums said the new building is also good for workspace motivation.
“People don’t realize everything that goes on behind the scenes,” she said. “We’re seen as doing glasses and contact lenses, but we have an insurance department, office managers and marketing – there are so many office needs. We had employees before working in a basement, and with the vision therapy practice, part of it was also in the basement. To get everybody up on the first floor with windows and adequate workspaces was huge.”
Brodhagen said the old office space was about 7,250 square feet, while the new location is almost 8,000 square feet.
“We have gone from four exam lanes to six, one screening room to two, have more frame board space and adequate office space for those working behind the scenes,” she said. “This is really an investment in the community, too. Dr. Thums and her husband both own their own businesses, so they’re showing they’re here to stay and that we take pride in what we’re doing here.”
‘More than meets the eye’
When most people think about eye care centers, Brodhagen said exams, contact lenses and glasses might be the first things that pop into their minds.
Though all of those things are part of HealthView, Brodhagen said “there’s more than meets the eye.”
“Roughly half of our appointments are medically necessary appointments, with the other half being comprehensive eye exams,” she said. “We see a lot of glaucoma, macular degeneration, foreign bodies, pink eye and people who come in for emergency eye things. For those patients who come for glaucoma, we’re not necessarily doing surgery for it, but we’re monitoring them every six months or as needed. So there’s a lot of follow-up care included with that.”
Thums said the driving distance to Wausau (50 minutes) or Eau Claire (75 minutes) is why HealthView does so many medical procedures.
“With our demographics, people don’t want to drive to Wausau or Eau Claire to see specialists for those things,” she said. “We’re fortunate we can handle that and have the right equipment and testing procedures we need to accommodate. We also have a good relationship with the medical doctors and the hospital in town. If they have someone present with any kind of eye issue – whether it’s an injury or pink eye – they often call us and send them up our way. We’re happy to take those referrals.”
Vision therapy clinic
Thums said as she previously mentioned, HealthView also has a vision therapy clinic.
“Now there is adequate housing in our new office, and patients don’t have to travel as far for therapy,” she said.
Thums said Dr. Betsy Meinel is behind 20/20 Vision Therapy, which is within the walls of HealthView Eye Care.
“She works mostly with children with vision disorders and those who might be struggling in school or have learning disorders,” she said. “It can often be traced back to symptoms coming from their eyes, so she does therapy with them. Our kids come in for about an hour once a week, sometimes for eight weeks, sometimes 16 weeks. Meinel works with them and with different programs and devices to train their eyes and their vision to be more efficient. We’ve had really good results.”
For more on HealthView Eye Care Center, visit healthvieweyecare.com.
