Diana Andre has worked inside ophthalmology practices since 1998. Every recommendation is grounded in what she has personally done in a lane, at a front desk, or in a consultation room — not in a framework from a business school textbook.
Diana took her first ophthalmic role in 1998, before she knew what a practice consultant was. She was hired to work in the practice — learn the equipment, room patients, assist with documentation, handle the front. Nobody was preparing her to advise anyone. She was just doing the job.
The next few years took her through a string of smaller Southern California offices, three positions in three years, general ophthalmology and low-volume refractive work. It was formative in the plainest sense: she learned the basics of every position in the building, and how a front-desk decision made at 8am shows up as a patient’s mood by 2pm.
A larger cataract and general ophthalmology practice came next, and it’s where she first saw the downstream cost of an undertrained technician team — not as a training-manual abstraction, but as physicians running behind and patients who felt rushed. She started noticing that the clinical floor and the schedule were really one system, not two.
Then came a practice doing meaningful oculoplastics volume alongside general ophthalmology, and her first real exposure to prior authorizations — specifically, to what they cost a practice when they’re handled reactively instead of on a schedule. She started documenting protocols for the first time, not because anyone asked her to, but because she was tired of watching the same mistake happen twice.
A premium refractive practice with real LASIK and cataract volume is where the work turned toward consultations specifically. She helped redesign the flow to cut down on same-day no-decisions, and introduced a structured follow-up sequence for patients who left without committing. It was the first time she’d changed a process and watched the number move.
A multi-location group stretched her across front-to-back operations at once — scheduling, technician workflow, a dry eye program built from nothing, optical coordination, HIPAA audit prep. It was her clearest look at what a practice looks like when it’s growing faster than its systems can hold, and what breaks first when nobody’s watching.
What changed her direction for good was landing somewhere that had already solved the problem she’d been circling for years: a premium IOL conversion process built on specific language, a staged consultation flow, and a counselor role with real accountability attached to it. The acceptance rates weren’t magic. They were a repeatable system, built by people, that she could learn well enough to rebuild elsewhere. That’s the practice she still works inside today — full-time, in-practice, present tense — because staying close to the floor is what keeps the advice current in a field where equipment, reimbursement rules, and patient expectations shift every year.
Depth varies by subspecialty. This is stated straight — because the last thing either party needs is a consultant who overstates their range.
See the seven service areas this experience translates intoPrimary area. High-volume LASIK and premium cataract practices for most of her career. Understands the consultation arc, the fee structure, the counselor role, the patient objections, and what it takes to move acceptance rates.
Built and helped run dry eye centers within comprehensive ophthalmology practices — protocol design, device training (TearLab, LipiFlow, iLux, M22), patient education flow, and coding basics. General ophthalmology operations are the daily environment.
Operational layer only — scheduling, patient flow, prior auth, technician prep. Not clinical or coding-deep. No meaningful experience in retina or pediatric ophthalmology.
No discovery frameworks. No 90-day transformation guarantees. Here is what an engagement actually looks like.
Before proposing anything, the first step is understanding what is actually happening in your practice. Not a questionnaire — a conversation. If what you’re describing isn’t something that can be materially helped, you’ll hear that in that call.
A specific scope — a defined problem, defined deliverables, defined timeline. No open-ended retainers where you pay monthly and someone shows up periodically. Every engagement has a clear objective and a clear endpoint.
The protocols built only work if the people executing them understand why they work. Time spent with your staff — not lecturing, but working through the specific scenarios they encounter every day.
Everything built is documented — consultation frameworks, prior auth checklists, dry eye intake protocols, technician training guides. When the engagement ends, you own everything. Nothing is locked inside a proprietary system.
If the conversion problem is actually a physician communication problem, that will be said. If the bottleneck is a single long-tenured employee who controls the schedule and no one has addressed it, it will be named. Practices hire consultants partly to hear things the internal team won’t say out loud.
Eight ophthalmology practices since 1998, all in Southern California. Past practices include Conejo-Simi Eye Group and Advanced Vision Care, alongside smaller general ophthalmology and refractive practices in the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles area. Her current practice is kept private. No hospitals, no ASCs in a management capacity, no optometry chains, no other specialty.
Solo. No consulting firm, no subcontractors, no junior associates who do the actual work after you sign. When you hire Diana Andre, you get Diana Andre. That limits the scale of what she can take on, which is why the engagement list is kept short.
A free 30-minute call first. Listen, ask questions, honest answer on whether there’s a fit. If yes — a specific scope of work with defined deliverables and a clear endpoint, not an open retainer. If not the right wheelhouse, that gets said in the call.
No. Every engagement has a defined scope, defined deliverables, and a clear endpoint — not an open-ended monthly retainer where someone shows up periodically. Everything built is documented and handed over, so when the engagement ends, your staff owns it and nothing requires ongoing consulting support to run.
Both, depending on what the work requires. On-site availability is limited to Ventura County, Los Angeles County, and adjacent areas. Document work, protocol drafting, consultation review, and training via Zoom are available to practices anywhere in the US. Most engagements involve a combination of both.
Ophtha-Consulting does not offer marketing strategy, brand development, website design, financial planning, or legal consulting — those are real disciplines that need their own specialists. If a discovery call reveals your need falls outside this scope, you’ll get an honest assessment and a referral, not a stretched engagement.
Real numbers from direct in-practice experience can be quoted — for example, the 78–89% premium IOL acceptance rate at her current practice is a real figure from a real practice. But that reflects a specific physician, a specific team, a specific patient population, and a consultation process that took time to build. Your practice will produce different numbers. The guarantee is that deliverables will be specific, documented, and usable — not a PowerPoint that never gets opened again.
A 30-minute call. No pitch. Ask about the experience, describe the practice. Both sides know quickly whether there’s a fit.