Asheville Eye Associates: A Tightly Run Ship

At Asheville Eye Associates, one of the most salient leader/follower relationships is the relationship between doctors and their nurses. At Asheville Eye, each doctor hires (and has the ability to fire, if need be) each nurse on their team. This process makes for a very personal relationship between the doctors and the nurses, and makes the nurses feel as if they can be of even more assistance to the doctor because the doctor has elected that they be there, and really wants them/needs them to be there.

I wanted to first describe the relationship between doctors and nurses because, in my opinion, it is the most important, because doctors and nurses are the people providing the primary care to patients, which is what an office in the healthcare field is “all about”. If doctors and nurses can work well together, it makes for a great foundation for the office.

Now, I will describe the structure of the office and the influence each “level” has on office leadership. At the “top”, there are the doctors that co-exist as co-owners of the office. There are 4 or 5 doctors that collectively own and operate Asheville Eye Associates, alongside being doctor’s themselves. Under these doctors are the doctors that work for Asheville Eye Associates but do not co-own the office(s). Then, there are the optometrists, the nurses and the operational employees, which include the marketing director, who is my boss, and others, such as the head of the surgery center and so on. Under these employees, there are the secretaries and maintenance staff. Lastly, there are the interns. I put the interns last because we have the most to learn about the operations of a medical office. Order of influence on leadership goes pretty much top-down, but I will explain how each level interacts with the other in a relatively “equal” way.

When it comes to leadership, the owners of the office (obviously) have the most say in how their business operates, but each doctor is paid on the basis of patient traffic, surgeries completed, and seniority (how long they have been at the office). Nurses and operational employees report to the doctors, and secretaries generally report to the operational employees. Each intern reports to their respective boss, mine being the marketing director.

As an intern, I feel as if I have been given a relatively large amount of autonomy. I basically control the social media for the office with little to no review on what I post, and I am given a lot of freedom in the project development sector as well. In terms of other interns, I have very little idea because we do not work in the same division, but I assume their positions are relatively autonomous as well, unless their work includes shadowing a doctor, for which they could not practice much autonomy at all (rightfully so).

The way in which Asheville Eye is structured allows for an immense amount of trust and respect. Though the doctors occupy the top level of leadership, much of their trust lies in their nurses, the operational employees, secretaries, and even the maintenance staff to keep the office up and running, as well as to keep patients coming back. Doctors do not have time to oversee the employees under them as well as do their job, so they must trust that everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing, and doing it well. I have seen little to no “slacking off” and little to no duties that have not been performed or that have been poorly performed. Though at times it may appear hectic, the trusting leader/follower relationships at Asheville Eye Associates allow for a tightly-run ship.