When One Person Leaves, the Whole Practice Feels It

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with running a small independent eye care practice. The schedule remains full, patients continue to call, urgent visits get added to the afternoon, and every part of the practice still needs attention, regardless of whether the team is fully staffed.

For Dr. Genare Woofter with Eye Care Associates of Manhattan, that pressure has made staffing one of the most immediate challenges facing his practice. With two doctors and a team of 10 to 11 employees, losing even one or two people can change the rhythm of the entire day.

“If we are down a person or two, it does take a big toll on the remaining staff trying to keep up with their daily tasks,” he says.

Dr. Woofter’s experience raises an important question for independent practices: What happens when a staffing shortage becomes more than a hiring problem and starts affecting the way the entire practice operates?

When the Work Stays, But the Person is Gone

In a small practice, there is rarely a department waiting to absorb someone else’s responsibilities. When a team member is unavailable, their work is redistributed among the people who are already managing full days of their own.

Dr. Woofter recently experienced this when one of his receptionists called out sick. With only one receptionist available, a technician stepped in to help cover the front desk while lunches and other responsibilities were managed. This flexibility is essential in an independent practice, as vacations or illness can quickly create gaps that the rest of the team must fill.

Hiring someone new doesn’t immediately solve the problem. The same staff covering extra work are now also responsible for training the new hire, extending the strain.

“When we do hire someone new, there’s no immediate relief,” Dr. Woofter explains “The employees who were already asked to ‘pick up the slack’ are then responsible for helping the new person learn the role and become comfortable within the practice.”

For practice leaders, this is key. The staffing gap isn’t just the time between employees. The gap continues until the new hire is confident and productive without constant support.

Eye Care Has a Learning Curve That is Easy to Underestimate

The environment’s complexity adds to the challenge. New employees must learn terminology, workflows, processes, technology, and role expectations, often all at once.

Dr. Woofter has seen new employees enter the eye care profession expecting a relatively straightforward healthcare position, only to discover how much knowledge is required.

“They quickly learn that there’s quite a lot to learn in eye care, and it’s not something that you just learn overnight,” he says. “At times, it’s almost like we speak a different language.”

In a small practice, cross-training is necessary so staff can fill in for each other, but it also means everyone needs broader knowledge.

“We want you to be proficient at your main role, and then also know enough about what everyone else is doing to be able to help if needed,” Dr. Woofter explains.

The flexibility that makes a small team resilient, therefore, is also one of the reasons onboarding can take time.

The Real Cost of Three Months of Training

New hires may handle some tasks in a few weeks, but full confidence in EHR systems and procedures takes about three months, Dr. Woofter estimates.

Three months can sound like a simple onboarding timeline until you consider what is happening around the new employee during that period. Questions need to be answered, workflows need to be demonstrated, and unfamiliar situations require help from someone who already knows what to do.

That support is necessary, but it carries an operational cost that is easy to overlook. When a new employee stops an experienced colleague to ask how something works, two workflows are disrupted, not just one. Dr. Woofter sees this often.

The goal should not be to remove experienced employees from training. Their knowledge, judgment, and understanding of the practice are essential. The opportunity is to make sure they focus their time on the things that genuinely require their expertise.

Give People Somewhere to Find the Answers

One solution: make answers readily available on demand.

Instead of sending new employees to experienced colleagues for every question, provide on-demand training, such as short videos, searchable tutorials, or structured learning paths, to help them work independently.

Dr. Woofter remembers this being valuable when his practice transitioned to MaximEyes EHR software. The training videos provided a consistent walkthrough that employees could follow rather than relying entirely on another person’s individual method.

“Having that kind of walkthrough tutorials within the software versus just being told, ‘Oh, this is how you do it,’ by someone else that’s figured out how to do it their own way, was extremely helpful to our team,” he says.

This type of training gives new employees confidence and reduces interruptions for experienced staff. It also creates a more consistent way to transfer knowledge, regardless of turnover.

As technology advances, Dr. Woofter says “on-demand resources are becoming a necessity.”

But What if Employees Didn’t Have to Learn Every Task?

Better training helps, but practices should also ask: Does every administrative task still require the same human effort?

This is where AI has the potential to become practical rather than theoretical.

For Dr. Woofter, the opportunity isn’t replacing people, but reducing repetitive tasks so staff can focus on more important work.

“If AI could handle some of the mundane tasks, it would help new employees get up to speed faster and reduce what they need to memorize,” he says.

That framing changes the conversation. Instead of asking which jobs AI could replace, ask which parts of a person’s job technology could make it easier.

AI as Another Tool in the Practice

While concerns about AI replacing staff are understandable, Dr. Woofter sees it as a practical tool, not a replacement.

Dr. Woofter’s comparison is a familiar one. The internet became a tool that changed how people find information, while calculators changed how people approach routine calculations without eliminating the need to understand mathematics.

“We all learned long division in school, and now we all carry calculators in our mobile phones,” Dr. Woofter says. “AI is developing in much the same way, helping people perform their jobs without becoming something they rely on to make all of our decisions and to do all of our jobs for us.”

For an independent practice, that distinction matters. A team of 10 does not necessarily need technology because it wants to become a team of eight. It may need technology because it wants those 10 people to have the capacity to handle a busy schedule without every unexpected absence creating another layer of pressure.

Building a Practice That Can Absorb the Unexpected

There’s no silver bullet for staffing. Practices still need to hire well, train thoughtfully, and create a place where people want to stay. Absences and turnover will always happen.

What practices can control is the level of disruption those moments create. That makes resilience an increasingly useful way to think about technology.

When choosing systems, practice leaders should ask:

• Can a new hire learn it easily?
• Can staff find answers independently?
• Can repetitive work be reduced?
• Can others step in when someone’s out?

These questions connect technology decisions directly to the people using them every day.

Ultimately, the best technology strategy helps a good team carry less unnecessary weight, adapt to the unexpected, and focus on what matters most: caring for patients.

Where Is Your Practice Carrying Too Much?

Staffing challenges often reveal where a practice is relying too heavily on manual processes, individual team members, or workflows that are difficult to sustain when someone is out.

Our complimentary Practice Opportunity Profile Assessment helps identify where your practice may have opportunities to improve patient communications, scheduling efficiency, staff workload, workflow automation, and overall practice performance.

Instead of starting with a product, we start with your practice: what is working, where your team is feeling pressure, and where technology may be able to give some of that time back.

Discover your Practice Opportunity Profile →