- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward," where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(bright music) (bright music) - Welcome to "Business Forward," I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Dr. Yannis Kolettis, ophthalmologist and partner at Illinois Eye Center, one of the premier eye centers in the country.

He's also a great friend of mine.

Welcome.

- Good to be here, thank you, Matt.

- Let's get right down to it.

Let's talk about you for a second.

Are you from around here?

- I did not grow up here in Central Illinois, I grew up on the East coast.

- [Matt] Where'd you grow up?

- Maryland was home, Columbia, Maryland, sorta triangulates with Washington and Baltimore.

- [Matt] It makes sense why you went to Maryland, 'cause you went to Maryland, didn't you?

- Yeah, so that's university, and then I spent med school and residency time in Virginia.

So I spent 10 years in Charlottesville, Virginia as well.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And then did some training overseas, and then for a year, I did a fellowship overseas, and then an opportunity came about, and I really did not have much exposure or familiarity with the Midwest.

I mean, I knew Peoria, Caterpillar, does it play there, et cetera, but I didn't have, (Matt laughs) I mean, I'd been to Chicago once.

Great big city, but came here, interviewed back in '99 or 2000.

- Wow!

- And then ended up really liking it and have been here ever since.

- Isn't that crazy?

- So it's been kinda weird.

Time just kinda flies by, so.

- Yeah.

So did you know, or did you have a dream growing up that this is the business you wanted to get into?

Or did you know what you wanted to do?

- No, I think, I think I was always kind of had this list of things that, I don't call it a wishlist, none of it included, you know, professional sports, so I said, well, let me try to (Matt laughs) maybe take advantage of some other, you know, possible benefits that were passed along from my parents.

I, I always was fascinated by the world of healthcare.

I had a special needs brother and was exposed from a young age to hospital systems, physicians, support services, all those things that really can make a difference in somebody's life.

Relatives that were in the field.

Neither of my parents, my dad was an engineer, my mom was an architect.

- [Matt] Huh.

- But I had an interest in doing something that I could see as a long-term career that could have some kind of, you know, benefit to myself personally but also to others.

You know, sidebar, my true dream was actually to become a commercial airline pilot.

- [Matt] Oh, wow!

- That's what I kinda thought I would do, and I took a year off from med school and kinda pursued a private license and was actually told by my instructor, "You know, you're in med school, you need to go back, finish up what you started, (Matt laughs) take up flying as a hobby," so here we are, so it's good.

- So you don't do anything with flying now?

- Not anymore, no.

I've become much more risk averse as the candles have added up.

- Yeah, that is so funny.

- Yeah.

- So in your business, and you could probably argue this for any business, but I think especially yours, are you always in training?

- Yeah, I mean, there's the kind of the label of continue education, which, you know, we have our boards, we have our regulations, you gotta kinda keep up with those things.

There's requirements, annual requirements, but that aside, there's always the need to continuously evolve as a practitioner who's responsible for the wellbeing of others.

I mean, if you stagnate and think that you can sort of practice medicine in 2023 with the knowledge you acquired in 2010, there's gonna be a disconnect (Matt chuckles) both in terms of, you know, the therapeutics you can offer, the diagnostics you can offer.

All those things really need to, you need to stay on top of that.

And there's no real algorithm, but if you're a motivated person and you actually care that what you're offering is something that will hopefully optimize someone's life or outcome for something that you do, then you do it.

And that involves, you know, participating online in forums with colleagues that are international, you learn from them.

There's different things that you can hear about from Europe or the Far East, you know, that we may not even have here in the US.

I mean, that was one thing that I benefited from when I did a fellowship, we can touch on that if it's worthwhile.

But, you know, these are wonderful things, and I kinda figure that if that becomes onerous or boring to me, then- - It's time?

- It might be time to not, you know, do that anymore.

- Yeah.

That's interesting because I've always thought, I think this was about 10 years ago, but it may even be more, that when I went to Illinois Eye and I got LASIK done, you think about, like, how cutting edge it is even now compared to what it was a decade ago or maybe even 15 years ago, I don't even remember when it was, but- - Yeah.

- It's just like, it's almost like how do you stay on top of being best-in-class all the time?

- Well, you know, you try not to put too much pressure on yourself.

You don't wanna create, you know, kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy of feeling like, you know, the world of information is collapsing you on the shoulders because there's such an exponential growth in what, you know, today's medical student's responsible for versus what was, you know, maybe 30 years ago.

- [Matt] Yeah, okay.

The knowledge has just become so just open and wide open.

But, you know, for me, that's one of the benefits of the facility that I'm in or the practice that I'm in, it's a collaborative collegial group of individuals, professionals, ethical people, very self-motivated.

So we kinda learn from one another, we motivate one another, and we all seem to be kind of patient-centric in the sense that as long as they're doing well, we're good and we continue.

So, it's always on my shoulder.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, I've always been that person that's not gonna be like, whatever, this is good enough.

You gotta challenge yourself, you gotta try to improve upon things, maybe vary things, with purpose, it's not just random 'cause you're bored.

I mean, there has to be some potential benefit to the person on the other side.

But it takes self-motivation.

I mean, you can't just be passive or expect somebody to tap you on the shoulder and say, "Hey, it's time to go do your homework."

- Right, right.

I think, for you, 'cause of your personality, I've always thought there's a competitiveness in you, but you play poker well.

(Yannis chuckles) It's like you can't- - Yeah, well, tell that to the people I've, you know, sat at the table with.

- Well, except when you're playing poker.

- Except the real game?

(Matt laughs) Exactly.

Competitiveness is, yeah, I mean, I've been accused of or I've been described as having that type of alpha sort of personality.

I mean, I do have a certain drive.

You know, there's a certain grid or tenacity, whatever you wanna call it, which I think it's important for what it was that I wanted to do.

I don't think that you can be, now I wasn't one of those people that was, you know, a savant where I could just have this photographic memory like my med school roommate- - Right.

- You know, and get away with doing very little, I was a busy bee.

I mean, I had to put the time in, so on and so on.

So, you know, these types of things, you know, go to show that you have to stay on top of things you have to, you know, work through the times when you feel like, okay, it's time to really, you know, put the best foot forward, so competitive, yes.

I try not to let that come out in ways that are negative.

I mean, I'm not competing with my colleagues or partners.

- No, no, I don't mean it like that, yeah.

- Right.

But internally.

- Internally, yes.

- I am.

Because I think I'm a pleaser, and I wanna do good by others.

And if my patients feel like I've done well by them, then that gives me motivation to come back and do it again.

- Yeah.

I think what, I was starting to go down the path of your personality, 'cause I think it's important with doctors.

You know, I think it's important for you to walk into a room, every time you've walked in with my daughter and walked in with me, there is that same calmness, that same demeanor, and I don't know if bedside manner's the right term, but it is.

- Sure.

That's what it's referred to.

I do like to have a nice personal interaction with the people that I'm taking care of.

I don't want it to be just transactional.

- [Matt] Yeah, I get it.

- Getting through my day is dependent on me feeling like there is some sort of reciprocity in terms of what I'm trying to give and what I get.

And it works out very well almost all the time.

I mean, you end up seeing a lot of people, personalities vary.

- Yeah.

- You know, people are worried, they're concerned, they might be stressed, and that can manifest in different ways.

Somebody might be anxious, and it might make them a little bit kinda short, but that doesn't mean that they are that way.

- Right.

- They're just, you know, so for me, I love the relations that I've actually built because I have been seeing patients now since 2001.

And I just this past week have seen, oh, a handful of people that have been with me since the start of my practice.

- I like that.

- People that were around when my son was born, you know, in 2002.

- Yeah.

- And they remember how that was and things like that.

So these longitudinal relations are really important to me.

- That's what makes it fun.

I mean, you're talking really that personal mission, but you also, there's also the mission of Illinois Eye.

- [Yannis] That's right.

- And so let's talk about the history, and I wanna to go into some specifics, but the history of Illinois Eye, how did that come about?

- So it kind of was, it started as a solo practice, for people that have known Dr. Thom Wyman, his father, George Wyman, basically opened up a practice here in Peoria after the Second World War in the mid '40s.

And then Thom, his son, joined him in the early '70s.

So it was a father-son outfit.

And then in the early '80s, Steven Sicher, who's since retired, a good friend of mine.

- [Matt] That's my doc, that was my doc.

- Your LASIK doc, yep.

He joined in the early '80s, so then all of a sudden, the family paradigm was kinda broken, right?

It wasn't just internal, now you have sort of a family.

You had a family practice, now you've got a bit of a mix.

And then the subsequent, you know, Dr. Lagouros joined, Dr. Safran, you know, Dr. Pike, just kept going, Dr. Rhode, and so on and so on.

And what ended up happening was the mission to kind of try to take care of people's issues and problems from cradle to grave, if you will, large scope, and try to keep them in the local community.

A lot of folks would have to go to the university settings when things would become more complex.

And I think Thom Wyman and his dad, their hope was to keep them here.

So there was the attempt to try to hire subspecialists, not just someone who does just general ophthalmology but people who do retina, you know, it was Dr. Pete, you know, when he came in.

And then people do glaucoma with Dr. Rhode, and then, you know, plastics and LASIK when I came around and stuff like that.

So that's been kind of the philosophy and doing it collectively under one roof, which happened when we moved to our single site location in 2007.

'Cause when I came, we were down on Hamilton Boulevard and we were also at Proctor Hospital.

But the idea.

- Huh!

- Yeah, we had an office, we had leased some space- - I did not know that.

- In Proctor, and we had an office on Hamilton next to the Methodist ED.

But the idea was ultimately to try to get everybody under one roof as much as possible, because then you have the concept of the curbside consult, right?

You're actually talking to your colleagues, like, "I'm not sure if this is what I think it is, let me talk to somebody, make sure we're on the right path."

So collaboration, always very, very important.

And you know, from there, it kept growing, we reached a critical mass, and the next thing you know, we're expanding into other markets.

And the Washington office opened up in 2013, and Pekin opened up right during the pandemic actually, in 2020.

And that's been flourishing.

So we've been very lucky in that regard.

- Well, it also helps with rural areas.

- Yes.

- You know, instead of everybody coming all the way out to Grand Prairie or whatever it may be.

- Correct.

- If you're on that side, let's say Canton.

- Yeah.

- You know, you can get- - Very much so.

And I have a really nice relationship with a group, a practice, an optometric practice in Canton.

And they're wonderful about, you know, sending patients our way, and it helps by being in Pekin.

And a lot of the folks in Pekin, you know, there was just this inertia about not wanting to kinda cross the river, and they would stay local, so some of 'em would make the trip, but others, you know, maybe would go to someplace else, but ultimately now we're able to service them and it's worked out well.

- You know what I love about your business?

And I'm still, I've kinda, like, I refer to my dad a lot.

My dad's 76 years old, and he, you know, he talks a lot.

And growing up, it was all about customer service.

- [Yannis] Yeah.

- It's the most important thing in business.

And my grandparents owned A&W Root Beer stands in Indianapolis, Indiana, and he worked 'em, so it was customer service, take care of them.

- Sure.

- That is what I think of when I walk into your place.

- Thank you.

- Because the way it's set up, it just, now, you have to have the right people in place.

- Of course.

- But the way it sets up and flows is it gives people the opportunity to actually be nice and lead you down the path, because you know how it is.

Like, there's times I don't wanna go to the doctor.

- [Yannis] Sure.

- I don't want anybody poking up my eyes or my teeth or whatever it may be.

- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Oh yeah, no, that's right.

People are, you know, can be a little unsettled when they go and see someone that might be, you know, providing them with news that may be uncertain, not great necessarily.

I mean, it's part of what we do, honestly telling them what's happening.

But from the first point of interface, when you're walking into the front desk, I mean, those folks have a big job.

They're the face of the practice and they make the first impression and they interact with someone who's then gonna kind of internalize that and say, "Okay, so this is kind of what they're about, and I'm feeling a little better, and maybe we'll take the next step."

And then you interact with, you know, the technicians and you interact with the scribes and you have to interact with a lot of staff.

And it's a challenge.

I mean, we have about 230 employees now at the eye center, and when I started, I think it might've been about 50, 60.

So I mean, the growth has been, you know, remarkable.

But at the same time, you have to be careful.

You're playing the balance of you don't wanna lose, you don't wanna depersonalize to the point where people feel like, well, we're just being herded through.

I mean, you do your best to stay within the honest parameters that you set philosophically to try to remain patient-centric.

Is it perfect?

Of course not, it never is.

There's gonna be times where many physicians are in the facility at the same time, that's gonna lead to more foot traffic.

Maybe the wait times are a little longer than people want.

But I hope when people are done seeing me, that by and large, on average, they've said, "He gave me the time that I needed even though maybe it was a little bit after my appointment time," because that's what people want when they come and see you.

They don't want you to kinda rush them through in an effort to catch up because something else had happened previously.

So if I gotta stay late.

- That's right.

- I'll be there till the last patient's seen.

- Yeah, I've actually witnessed that from you.

So, you said you had 230 employees.

There's another piece that people don't think about.

I mean, you're a doctor, so you do doctor stuff, right?

- (chuckles) Yeah, I try.

Yeah, that's the goal.

- [Matt] But you're also a business owner- - That's right.

- Who has to hire, train, do all of those things.

- Right.

- And that's hard.

- It is, it is, it is.

That's why, again, you know, the one thing that I love about the situation I'm in is that we still are a physician-owned entity.

The economics and the demographics of physician practices have been changing.

And what used to be a majority of physicians being independent in this country has now shifted.

And the majority is now owned by another, you know, corporation, healthcare system, insurance company, hospital, whatever it may be.

COVID accelerated a lot of that, made it very difficult for independent practices to deal with some of the challenges that arose.

We were lucky because of the, you know, some of the loans and the local community support.

And because we were such a, I think, fundamentally sound pyramid that we were able to deal with what happened and then come out on the other end, you know, doing well.

So, you have to have the right people in place who then put the right people in place.

And we have a wonderful management team, from executive director to, you know, clinic manager to sub-managers within finance and patient experience and optical and all those kinds of things.

And the org chart, it's getting more complex.

And you wanna be careful to not turn it into a circuit board.

- (chuckles) Right.

- But with the growth, that is not just an ambition for ego or anything like that, it's the demographics- - Or cash.

- There are people that need, right, people.

There's a growing segment of the population that requires care, there's retirements, other competitors or other, you know, healthcare providers or eyecare providers, they're leaving the community, leaving a void, and all of a sudden, you know, somebody's gotta fill it.

So, but to your point, yes, I thankfully am not on the absolute front, you know, face-to-face, granular level of hiring.

But there are, you know, unless it's kind of like upper management, but we do have people who do a wonderful job with it, and it's very challenging, because as you've- - No, I get it.

- Discussed in other talks, you know, you've had other interviews with people in the field, there's a lot of fluidity.

People are coming, they're leaving.

They don't necessarily, maybe there's a better offer somewhere, maybe they're figuring things out, which is fine.

So we sometimes have folks that will be there for a while, we're optimistic, but then, you know, circumstance, family situation takes them away, so you have to, you gotta be nimble.

- But on the flip of that too, though, is you're a partner.

- [Yannis] That's right.

- So there's a brand.

- There is, yeah.

- And that brand has a certain level of expectations, just like anybody does.

- Sure.

- It could be Chick-fil-A.

- That's right.

- They have a brand.

- That's right.

- And so I think that's the interesting part is 'cause a lot of times, people go into, especially doctor's offices, they just think they just flow.

But they're businesses from top to bottom and they're complex.

- They are, they are, and things don't end at 5 or 5:30.

I mean- - Right.

(chuckles) - You know, there are meetings, there's a lot of email stuff.

We have, you know, group texts threads that are happening at any given time.

I mean, but that's the nice thing about this particular group.

And again, I can't speak fully from a comparative point of view because it's been the only job I've had essentially.

I mean, I had a job when I was in residency training and stuff.

But this is the true first, you know, job as an ophthalmologist that I've had, so I can't say, well, I had this job, had that job, and this one compares that way.

But having been the final destination of some, you know, practitioners who've had experience with other places, that's one of the nice things about being in a group where you actually are friends with the people who you're partners with.

- It helps.

- It does, because then you try to figure things out and you try not to leave the table angry.

There's gonna be different philosophical ideas and people will have their own thoughts, and that's what you want.

You don't wanna just have sort of, like, this group think that's an echo chamber, but you still- - Yeah.

- You're gonna have some headbutting, and that's okay.

But it tends to lead to ideas, and ultimately what we've found has been solutions that have been for the betterment of the practice as a whole.

- So you talk about optical, and I always, I dissect businesses just all the time, I don't know why, it's just always been a hobby of mine.

I walk in, so optical I've always found an interesting part of the business because those people have to be as patient as can be because- - [Yannis] Yeah, they really do.

- I'm sitting there going, all 10 pairs of glasses I tried on really were ugly, or my nose is too big, or whatever it may be, (Yannis chuckles) right?

- Not that, Matt, not at all.

- But you know what I'm saying.

- I know exactly what you're saying, yeah.

- You know, somebody could take five minutes, but somebody could be 45 minutes trying to figure something out and still walk out with nothing.

- That's right, no, our optical department has been a wonderful thing.

It kind of flies under the radar because I think people see us first and foremost as sort of a medical surgical facility, which we are, but there is a full service nature to that because glasses, contacts, I mean, those are bread-and-butter items that people need.

- They need 'em.

- They're required, and we also have, you know, a large group of optometrists that work with us and for us that, you know, that provide scripts for these types of things and see patients in this regard.

So the optical department, which is full service, actually each site has its own full-service optical, which is very convenient and they can kind of sort of interact between them.

If a patient says, "Well, I wanna pick it up at that facility or that," no problem.

- Yeah.

- Has been a wonderful service line that really benefits patients a lot.

I mean, we have, I think there were 13,000, you know, optical jobs that we did last year.

- (chuckles) That's a lot.

- Yeah, we have 3,500 unique frames, you know, through display and catalog obviously.

And there's 12 currently, they're ABO-certified, it's the American Board of Opticianry certified opticians.

And we have two more taking the test here soon.

And that's important because the world of optics is changing.

I mean, the glasses can be very complex, it's not just your simple executive bifocal with big old lens and so forth, this is something now where it could be very nuanced.

You got people that have desires to read their music and see their computer and look at the side and not get a fishbowl effect and all that.

So to your point, yes, they have to be extremely patient, and they're sometimes dealing with folks that know what they want, and that's okay.

And the idea is we hope, I can't always compete with the Costcos of the world on price, even though we do have competitive pricing, at least the experience of, well, we'll stick with you till you're happy, and if you really need something, you know where we are, come back in, we'll try to take care of it.

- Well, I'm giving them a shout out because I think that's a- - [Yannis] They deserve it.

They're wonderful.

- It's a hidden gem is the term I'll use.

We only have a couple minutes left, but I wanna ask you just real quick, like, how do you stay ahead of the game in technological advancements?

- Yeah, I mean, technology is sort of a root in the world of ophthalmology when you talk about, you know, scanners, when you talk about lasers, when you talk about diagnostic equipment, when you talk about machines that help do the surgical things that we do.

That also is a self-, I think, driven type of behavior and interest and curiosity.

I've always been techie.

I mean, not because, I can't tell you that I can disassemble something electronic and build it back, but I've always enjoyed technology.

I always was fascinated by the equipment that I saw in my optometrists office when I first got contact lenses when I was, you know, 10.

I just thought it was fascinating.

So that, I think, just internal sense of this is really cool, what kind of machines are doing this versus this.

You know, you go to the meetings, you do, you know, your collaboration with your colleagues, you bring, I mean, fortunately there's a big, there are representatives, you know, who work in the companies who are willing to come out, show you the equipment, do things like that.

We bring things in, is this gonna benefit our patients?

- [Matt] Well, and the cost.

- There are costs, and you have to keep those in mind because you don't wanna then result in having some sort of transference of cost for no reason.

It has to benefit the patient in the end.

- It has to benefit.

- Well, I just wanna tell you, you guys do great work.

- Thanks, Matt, appreciate it.

Really do.

- No, I appreciate you.

I appreciate you coming in.

- It's my pleasure.

- It's an interesting topic because you could just keep going on and on and on with it, and- - There's a lot there.

- There is a lot there, so appreciate it.

Dr. Yannis Kolettis.

- Any time.

- Illinois Eye.

- Thank you.

That's another "Business Forward," and I'm Matt George.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) - Thank you for tuning in to "Business Forward," brought to you by PNC.