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Where did you attend optometry school? Do you have any school advice/study tips?
  • SCCO / Advice & Study tips: make sure you form or join a study group with smart people that you enjoy being with, don’t be afraid to ask questions, volunteer or work as an intern at a private practice in order to see how the things that you are learning in school are applied in the working world.
Which one thing that you learned in optometry school do you use the most in your daily practice?
  • Kevin: a good case history helps to weed out unimportant things to help you quickly get to the problem solving.
  • Linda: to treat each patient not just as a set of eyes, but a person who has the same feelings and fears as our own.
Did you do a residency? If yes, what area and would you recommend it to others?
  • No. Wanted to make money right away and get married!
Where do you practice now? Pros & cons? How did you end up there/make the choice to be there?
  • Huntington Beach
  • Pros: great quality of life, great weather, close to the beach, great schools, nice patients
  • Cons: cost of living is high, lots of competition because everyone wants to live near the beach, since we live close to our practice, we bump into our patients everywhere. End up in HB: Kevin worked in Long Beach after graduation, Linda worked in Newport Beach and HB was in the middle for us
What state do you practice in? What are the benefits and drawbacks of practicing there? 
  • California
  • Benefits: great weather, beach, diversity
  • Cons: crowded, high taxes, congested freeways, high home prices and cost of living
Do you have a specific patient demographic that dominates your area and if so, how have you adapted your practice to serve them better?
  • Demographic: upper middle class community
  • Adaptations; mostly well educated and well informed so therefore they expect a higher level of service, quality, and value.
Do you own your own practice? How did you join/open it? How long have you been there? 
  • Yes
  • We purchased our practice from a retiring alumni from SCCO
  • We have been there 22 years
What was your most valuable resource when getting involved in your initial private practice setting?
  • Our experiences from working at Optometry offices and Ophthalmology practices for over six years after graduation helped us experience how it is to run a business especially working with reps and dealing with patient care.
What outside services do you use to help manage/elevate your practice (patient recall services, social media, buy-in groups, CPA, financial advisor, lawyer, etc.)?
  • All starts with our Vision Source family.
  • We have a recall service that personally calls our patients to schedule their appointments.
  • Yes, we have a great CPA, financial advisor and a great network of colleagues and friends , COA & AOA to protect our interests.
What is one thing that you wish you knew before you started practicing?
  • How to hire a great staff that all get along well.
Do you have more than one location? What factors went into that decision? How soon after your first location was open did you open your subsequent locations?
  • No just one.
What tips do you have for hiring/training staff and how do you motivate them?
  • Hiring: we use Indeed and we offer competitive wages and benefits. We use a personality test when we interview applicants to help select the best person to fit a specific need.
What have you done to set yourself apart from other eye care professionals near you?
  • We set ourselves apart from others with Ritz Carlton like service. We carry the newest technologies, we treat patients like they are the most important person to us during their visit and we pride ourselves by making our patients a part of the Beachside family.
Please add any additional thoughts or advice for our members.
  • An absolutely great field to practice in the health care profession. We have positioned ourselves as gatekeepers working along primary care doctors in the management of many systemic diseases especially diabetes and hypertension. Not only do you help their visual needs, but you are comanaging systemic diseases. As far as working hours, you have the flexibility of how hard you want to work with where you want to practice from types of settings to hours worked/days. A wonderful, rewarding career that helped us raise our children to become a family of four ODs!

If you have any additional questions for Drs. Kevin Germundsen & Linda Arboleda, their email is: [email protected]​
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