Dr. Bohman retires; Morrow Vision welcomes Dr. Matthew Piper

By Tay­lor Kaser -

Mor­row Vision Cen­ter is wel­com­ing a new optometrist to the office.

After 35 years prac­tic­ing optom­e­try at Mor­row Vision Cen­ter, Dr. Charles Bohman has retired and handed over the reigns of his Mt. Gilead office to Dr. Matthew Piper. With the respon­si­bil­i­ties of run­ning a prac­tice behind him, Dr. Bohman looks for­ward to the bound­less oppor­tu­ni­ties of retirement.

Dr. Bohman’s path to becom­ing an optometrist first began in the fifth grade. Two suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs came into his ele­men­tary school to speak to the stu­dents regard­ing their occu­pa­tion. One of the men was a trash col­lec­tor and the other was an optometrist. Not­ing the suc­cess of both indi­vid­u­als, Dr. Bohman decided that when he grew up, he would pur­sue one of those two occupations.

By the end of high school, he decided on a career in optom­e­try. He grad­u­ated from The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Optom­e­try in 1977. After grad­u­at­ing, he taught courses at the uni­ver­sity for optom­e­try and tech­ni­cians. How­ever, with grow­ing fam­ily respon­si­bil­i­ties, he decided to con­cen­trate his efforts on pri­vate practice.

Through net­work­ing with his orig­i­nal men­tor, the doc­tor who first inspired him to enter into optom­e­try, he joined the prac­tice of Dr. Roy Miller in Mt. Gilead in 1978. In 1992, due to a increase in patient vol­ume, Dr. Miller opened a dif­fer­ent loca­tion and Dr. Bohman remained at the loca­tion on E. Mar­ion St.

Dr. Bohman said that one of the things he appre­ci­ated most about his time prac­tic­ing was the per­sonal rela­tion­ships with mem­bers of his prac­tice and the sur­round­ing community.

“Being able to help a diverse range of peo­ple”, he said, “is the rea­son why I decided to become a doctor.”

Also, expe­ri­enc­ing the evo­lu­tion of the optom­e­try pro­fes­sion is a fond mem­ory for Dr. Bohman.

“When I first grad­u­ated, optometrists weren’t allowed to admin­is­ter diag­nos­tic drops into patients’ eyes. Today, optometrists can write pre­scrip­tions for top­i­cal and oral med­ica­tions and can actively man­age patients with glau­coma, dia­betes, and mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion. Optometrists are now the pri­mary care gate­keep­ers in the oph­thalmic field.”

One of the most reward­ing pro­grams that Dr. Bohman imple­mented at Mor­row Vision Cen­ter was per­form­ing free exam­i­na­tions for mem­bers of the com­mu­nity dur­ing tough eco­nomic times. To be eli­gi­ble, patients did not have to clear any finan­cial screen­ing. Dr. Bohman says that he relied on the hon­esty of patients and was sim­ply grate­ful for the oppor­tu­nity to help those in need. He esti­mates that he exam­ined more than 2,000 patients through the free clinic program.

Retire­ment for Dr. Bohman will allow him to spend more time with his wife and to travel and explore the world. He already has plans of vis­it­ing South Africa and other des­ti­na­tions such as Cuba and Antarctica.

With Dr. Bohman retired, Dr. Piper strives to con­tinue serv­ing the com­mu­nity with the high­est level of pro­fes­sional eye care. Dr. Piper, a 1998 Lex­ing­ton High School grad­u­ate, spent time at Mor­row Vision Cen­ter prior to Dr. Bohman’s retirement.

“Dr. Bohman and I were aware that much work prior to the tran­si­tion would be nec­es­sary in order to ensure a seam­less tran­si­tion. We have reviewed many of the practice’s patient files together and have dis­cussed man­age­ment options to pro­vide opti­mal con­ti­nu­ity of care,” Piper said.

While in kinder­garten, Dr. Piper was diag­nosed as being near sighted. Since then, he has annu­ally vis­ited an optometrist to mon­i­tor his eye health and prescription.

“After I received my first pair of glasses, I was astounded to observe that trees have leaves!” The impact from that early expe­ri­ence led to his desire to become an optometrist so that he could help oth­ers with their visual needs.

Dr. Piper grad­u­ated from Alma Col­lege in 2002 and The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Optom­e­try in 2006. He and his wife recently had a daugh­ter and they were eager to move closer to fam­ily. So he mailed let­ters of inquiry to optometrists in cen­tral Ohio that he believed may be prepar­ing for retire­ment. Dr. Bohman said he was impressed by the cor­re­spon­dence and their tran­si­tion plans grew from that ini­tial let­ter. Although no longer per­form­ing exam­i­na­tions, Dr. Bohman will be avail­able as a con­sul­tant, uti­liz­ing his famil­iar­ity with patients, many of whom he’s seen mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of their family.

Dr. Piper is a mem­ber of the Cham­ber of Com­merce and has con­tin­ued Mor­row Vision Center’s Lions Club pro­gram. He’s enthu­si­as­tic about becom­ing a mem­ber of the com­mu­nity and work­ing with the local med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. He looks for­ward to uti­liz­ing the practice’s mod­ern tech­nol­ogy, includ­ing an auto­mated visual field machine and a reti­nal camera.

“What impressed me most about Dr. Bohman and the staff of Mor­row Vision Cen­ter was the level of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and the atten­tion to detail,” he noted.

Look­ing toward his future, Dr. Piper said, ”Dr. Bohman has been a great men­tor, and I aspire to con­tinue his tra­di­tion of excel­lence in com­pre­hen­sive eye care, com­pas­sion­ate eye care, and oph­thalmic dispensing.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.