At Lucens, we believe there's no one "right" way to build a fulfilling medical career, and every medical professional has a story worth sharing.

Our "Behind the Scrubs" series pulls back the curtain on the diverse journeys of remarkable individuals in healthcare. Join us and discover the human stories that make medicine such a rewarding field.

Three Things You’ll Learn

1. How Omar strategically designed the launch plan for his own private practice
2. An innovative education track that generates doctor-entrepreneurs
3. How to make your waiting room feel like a five-star hotel

Meet Omar Shakir, MD, MBA

Omar grew up in Florida near Cape Canaveral on the Space Coast. Before pursuing a career in ophthalmology, he played Division III baseball at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

He received his Doctor of Medicine from Albany Medical College and completed an internship at Johns Hopkins University. Omar served his residency at the University of Florida and completed a two-year vitreous and retina surgery fellowship at Yale University.

In 2018, he founded Coastal Eye in New Haven, Connecticut, alongside his wife Meaghan. The practice specializes in cataract and vitreoretinal surgery.

The American College of Elective Surgery voted Omar one of the Best Cataract Surgeons in America from 2022 - 2024, and he earned both New York Magazine and Connecticut Magazine Top Doctor recognition.

Starting Out

Why did you want to be a doctor?

I had a personal health problem growing up and then a different one when I was in high school, and those were formative years. The second one got me on the pathway to ophthalmology because a baseball teammate's dad showed an interest in my issue; he had a feeling that there was something wrong with my eyes, and he asked me to come in for a free examination.

That's where my interest in medicine sparked.

I also knew that no matter what I did, I wanted to work with my hands. I grew up in construction, and my dad was a general contractor. So, I knew I wanted to do something with my hands or do something skilled.

Being a surgeon was a great way to utilize your hands in the medical field.

No matter what I did, I wanted to work with my hands.

What was medical school like for you?

I did what's called a "leadership in medicine" program. This was an eight-year program that included med school and business school. I joined right after high school at Union College in upstate New York. The program at Union offered a business school, graduate college, and a med school through a partnership with Albany Medical College.

I completed that program successfully, so I had an MBA by the time I was a third-year medical school student. I went into an internship at Johns Hopkins and then a residency at the University of Florida. Next, I went on for an additional two-year fellowship in retinal surgery at Yale.

From there, I opened up a practice pretty much immediately.

It takes a lot of foresight for somebody to enroll in a program like that because you need to know that's what you want to do. Thankfully, I had a vision for what I wanted to do from a young age.

I had an MBA by the time I was a third-year medical school student.

Why didn’t you follow the traditional academic route in medicine?

The big factor for me was the MBA. Otherwise, I would have gone the traditional route and given myself that flexibility. Having a business degree without sacrificing two additional years was the deciding factor.

Private Practice Fundamentals

What gave you the confidence to open a private practice?

Having had that training in business, management, and leadership gave me the confidence to talk about financial modeling and pro formas and all these things that otherwise, for most doctors, are scary topics.

It gave me the confidence to talk to banks about obtaining loans, especially as a young person fresh out of a fellowship signing a lease agreement and making these significant decisions. Otherwise, most physicians gain this knowledge just through experience.

I value the educational piece because it gave me the skill set and the tools, but mainly, the confidence to open my practice from a business standpoint.

My training in business, management, and leadership gave me the confidence to talk about all these things that otherwise, for most doctors, are scary topics.

Why do you think confidence is so crucial in those early stages of starting a practice?

It's all very daunting. It's a big undertaking to open up your own practice with a lot of financial commitment and unknowns, and you don't know how it will work out. What happens if you have to declare bankruptcy or break a long-term lease commitment?

In my modeling, I was accounting for as many variables and known things as possible using my business knowledge. That gave me confidence that what I told the bank was true because the banks often don't have the expertise. They just assume that you know what you're doing.

Of course, you need an accountant to give their stamp of approval on projections, but apart from that, banks have no idea how your business runs and all the particulars of it.

For example, where are you going to get patients from? How are you going to get contracted with insurance companies? How much are they going to pay? How are you going to negotiate the fee schedule? What about malpractice insurance coverage, all that stuff?

So, having the confidence to deal with the ins and outs of my field gave me the conviction that I was making the right move and that things I calculated, for instance, break-even points, were conservative and realistic.

It's a big undertaking to open up your own practice with a lot of financial commitment and unknowns, and you don't know how it will work out.

Besides your training, how did you know what to do?

A lot of it was learning, just constantly learning.

I incorporated a year before I was actually open for business. So, I spent that time preparing everything and learning what I didn't know.

I basically did that through my final year of training. So, my second year of fellowship was spent learning to be a retina surgeon and setting up this practice.

Private practice is a world you're not exposed to in residency, fellowship, or medical school. They don't teach you this stuff.

When I started my practice, there weren't many good resources. So, I had to learn it on my own. I spent most of my evenings and spare time trying to figure everything out.

Just take EMR systems. I had no idea that there were so many different EMR systems because I was exposed to one major one in training, and that system is very cost-prohibitive in a private practice setting. So, I had to look into the different private EMRs.

All of this was a new world.

Private practice is a world you're not exposed to in residency, fellowship, or medical school. They don't teach you this stuff.

How did you decide on the location to open your practice?

My market analysis, which was part of my decision to open and part of my research and getting there, showed a gap in the Greenwich area for ophthalmologists.

It turned out to be right.

I was able to create a small niche because I read the market properly.

If I went somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I could dominate a whole geographic area and be the only game in town. But that wasn't my interest. I wanted to be close to New York City and got that.

I was able to create a small niche because I read the market properly.