MT. BAKER VISION CLINIC EYES GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES

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Mt. Baker Vision finding focus in COVID-19’s wake

Third location to open in Ferndale this summer

Mary Louise Van Dyke

Dr. Steven Koning and Dr. Hannah Joyner.

With COVID-19 restrictions easing, the eye doctors and staff of Mt. Baker Vision Clinic are seeing familiar and new faces troop through the doors at the Bellingham and Lynden locations. The clinic’s new Ferndale location is scheduled to open this summer.

“We’re starting to find our rhythm here again at the clinics,” said optometrist Dr. Kelly Larsen.

Mt. Baker Vision opened its first office in Bellingham in 1951. Eye care in that era included prescriptions for glasses and contact lenses fashioned out of hard plastic.

Larsen and business partner Dr. Brian Koning head the business today, and patients have access to a variety of services, including glasses, contact lenses, OrthoK lenses — which offer a non-surgical eye treatment for myopia and stigmatisms — and scleral lenses for corneal issues.

Patients are served by 18 employees, all of whom live in Whatcom County. Among the five eye health doctors are part-timer Dr. Jeff Larson, who, along with Dr. Wayne Musselman, who retired in 2020, was in the second generation of owners. The clinic’s two other optometrists are Dr. Hannah Joyner and Dr. Steven Koning.

“There’s a lot of joy that comes from having staff who care as they do,” Brian Koning said.

Koning joined the practice in 2011, and Larsen came aboard in 2015. Koning grew up in Idaho, graduated from Pacific University College of Optometry and completed a residency in Salt Lake City. His areas of specialty include management of eye conditions related to diabetes, macular degeneration, glaucoma and specialty contact lenses, and co-managing LASIK and cataract surgical cases.

Patients vary from the preschooler who doesn’t want to be fitted with glasses to the 80-something person who has just lost a spouse.

“Everyone comes with their own story,” Koning said. “We have the chance to meet them, and we’re there to take care of them. We do it with excellence.”

Larsen, who moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1995, is a graduate of Pacific University and specializes in diagnosing and treating ophthalmic disease. She has adopted a team-based approach to care, one in which a person’s health care team coordinates and works together.

Larsen describes her dual role as focused on taking care of people.

“What I like best are the people I get

Top right: Dr. Joyner and patient during eye exam.

Bottom right: Dr. Joyner and technician, Sarah Ross, help a client choose the right frames.

to meet each day, and I get to work with a diverse and wonderful group of folks,” she said.

Mt. Baker Vision weathered the pandemic well, adding a new location in Ferndale and expanding the Lynden office at 1610 Grover St.

The Lynden clinic was small and outdated, with a single examination room. Another business at the location left during the pandemic, giving Mt. Baker Vision an opportunity to take over the vacated space.

“In the middle of COVID, we decided there was no time like the present to remodel and expand,” Koning said.

With the remodel, patients in the Lynden area who live with macular challenges can be seen closer to home, he said.

The clinic has been drawing about 20% of its patients from the Ferndale area, so company leaders decided to add a third location there, at 1887 Main St. The 2,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to begin serving patients in July.

“That was a fun, slightly nerve-wracking time, not knowing what the economy was going to do,” Koning said.

Doctors and staff are currently seeing

PHOTOS: Sattva Photo

more pediatric patients whose vision shows the effects of staring at computer screens for online learning classes and doing a lot of work that calls for using near vision, Larsen said.

Koning and Larsen are looking forward to seeing the Ferndale location grow and developing ties with the community in that area, they said, while continuing to focus on providing the best eye care possible for patients. ■