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www.undeerc.org continued From page 28 grown into a practice where we're more of a multi-specialty practice,” he said. Doctors now offer corneal transplants, eyelid surgery, and can surgically treat patients with glaucoma. “For a lot of those issues a patient would need to go to Fargo or Rapid City, or even the Twin Cities, but now they can be treated right here in Bismarck. The patients don't have to travel nearly as far as before.”

Volk also acknowledges the role that technology has played in the business.

“Closer to home is always better,” he said. “But the other thing is, there are many situations, many diseases that in the past we were good at diagnosing but there was no treatment for them. Now with improvements in medical care we can treat a lot of things and keep people active because all of us want to remain independent. And I think that’s a factor for our typical North Dakota person, they want to be independent.”

Marion said the practice treats patients from the cradle to the grave.

“I know that's sort of an overused statement,” he said, “but we have providers that can handle those patients when they're very young. We see patients that are very, very little and they're in the NICU in hospitals and we continue to see them all the way to when they get to be in their 90s.”

That hasn’t been fully proved yet since the company has only been around for 30 years, but it seems to at least be trending that way. Doctors at the institute have been serving many of the same patients since it started in ‘89. Marion said a core belief of the institute is to treat its employees and patients “with the deepest respect.”

Volk said his philosophy has been to take care of staff and patients like family and is quick to acknowledge that success has come not just from the doctors but each member of the team.

“Everybody who answers the phone, everybody who does screening of a patient, everybody who handles the insurance and billing and all of that, they all are a part of our success,” he said.

“We kind of have this philosophy that if a person is in a situation and doesn’t quite know what to do, we ask ‘How would you want your mother taken care of?’ It really reduces the complexity a lot. We try to take care of people like we’d want our own family to be cared for and it's made a big difference.”

As for the future of eyecare, Volk said it is a service that people will always seem to need and he is happy he’s played a part in providing quality care for the people of the Dakotas and Minnesota, but most especially making services available for people in his own community. Retirement is looming for the nearly 70-year-old Volk, who said he plans to exit the profession sometime this year; but it won’t be easy letting go of a business he helped build over the past three decades.

“It’s OK,” he said. “It's probably time for me to step aside and let the younger people have their vision.” A vision that already seems to be taking shape. “Actually,” he continued, “the new expansion that we recently did was largely from the input of our younger partners.”

As Volk prepares to depart the company he helped create, he’s not worried about its future; he knows it’s in good hands.

“That's what really allowed me to consider retiring, the fact that we have such capable people,” he said. “It makes it much easier.