We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr Hardeep Kataria a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dr Hardeep thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

After 12 years of practicing as an associate, I decided to open my own advanced dry eye center/medical practice from ground-up. Throughout my career, I focused on positioning myself with the top-doctors in my area, learning and growing with them, managing complex cases and broadening my clinical acumen. When I decided to open my own practice, I knew that clinical care would be the easy part; managing a business and medical practice would be the challenge. And it has been.

I opened my practice cold, starting with a vanilla shell space and enlisting the services of a designer, architect and general contractor who could help me culminate my vision into a well-formed and functioning medical space. I utilized social media and Pinterest for inspiration and finally, my design came to life. While my general contractor and architect worked hard at finalizing the physical aspects of my space, I worked on developing policies and protocols; health insurance contracts, credentialing, inventory, instrument purchases and finalized furniture decisions. After 14 long months, it all came together. The biggest challenge at first was to spread the word about my specialty: advanced dry eye disease.

My best advice to a young professional who might consider opening their own practice: take your time in deciding if this is the right fit for you. Do your own research and speak to current practice owners to gain a sense of their challenges through the process.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a dry eye specialist. Dry eye disease is a prevalent disease that affects all ages, especially given the advent of increase digital device use. Dry eye disease can also be related to contact lens use, systemic conditions such as thyroid disease and Sjogren’s Syndrome, history of eye surgeries such as LASIK and makeup wearers. Dry eye disease affects over 40 million Americans and most patients ignore their symptoms in the early stages, turning to often-inappropriate over the counter eye drops for temporary relief. A dry eye specialist such as myself offers advanced diagnostic imaging and testing to understand the root cause of dry eye and then implement a plan to treat the root cause.

I am very proud of being voted US Newsweek’s Top Eye Doctor 2022 and 2023; voted #1 in CA and #5 in the entire United States. These votes were submitted by my fellow colleagues and the respect of my colleagues means the world to me.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

I would choose this career and profession over and over again. I love the ability to affect a patient’s entire quality of life by optimizing the way that they see and the way their eyes feel as their dry eye specialist. The eyes are intricate and complex and as a trained eye care professional, I take pride in educating patients about their eyes.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When patients feel better after dry eye treatments, they also want to know how their eyes can look better- more bright, refreshed and less droopy. I have now expanded my practice to offer EYE AESTHETICS- meaning facial and ocular treatments to achieve exactly that; brighter and more refreshed eyes. We will achieve this goal through radio frequency for eye wrinkles, microneedling, neuromodulators, fillers and medical grade skincare safe to use around the delicate eye.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.avanteyes.com
• Instagram: @dr.hardeep.kataria and @avanteyes_dryeye
• Facebook: @AvantEyesOptometry
• Yelp: Avant Eyes Optometry & Advanced Dry Eye Center

Image Credits
@villaframed