DR. MITCH JACKSON
Focus Through the Generations (FTTG) offers insight from four different generations of the nation's top ophthalmologists. Hear from the experts themselves on their varying life experiences in the industry.
Mitch Jackson, M.D., is a board-certified ophthalmologist specializing in cataract and refractive surgery. He received his medical degree from Chicago Medical School, completed his internship at Columbus Hospital and his Ophthalmology residency at University of Chicago Hospitals. Currently, Dr. Jackson is the Founder/Medical Director of Jacksoneye and is also a clinical assistant at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
hear from dr. Mitch Jackson
Our host, Polly Neely had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Mitch Jackson for an exclusive discussion regarding his life and industry experiences. Get to know Dr. Jackson a little deeper in this episode of “Focus Through the Generations”.
Polly Neely: Hi, this is Polly from Vision Care Connect, we are interviewing this evening for our series, Focus Through the Generations. We're in a really unique time right now in our industry where we have four generations of actively practicing ophthalmologists. So, we wanted to take advantage of those generations and see what they had to say about each other, about the times, about our industry and just about life. And we want to thank Bruder Healthcare for being a supporter of this as well. Tonight, we are so lucky to have Dr. Mitchell Jackson with us. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Jackson.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Hey, Polly. Great to be here.
Polly Neely: You're always cool to talk to. I'm expecting some great things from you and I'm going to give you an opportunity here to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: So, Mitch Jackson, I've been in private practice in the Northern Chicago land, AKA Siberia during the winter, for 28 years, I'm going on my 29th year this coming June. I did my training at University of Chicago and, met my first wife, had three kids, and opened a practice here. Solo, cold turkey, 29 years ago and I've done over 50,000 procedures now. I’m about to build a new building, we call it our JEdi Dream for Jackson Eye culture, it's exciting. I’m an anterior segment, cataract, refractive surgeon. My hobby is, as you know, DJMJ. I do stuff for Live Nation for the last several years, obviously with COVID, nothing has been happening. I did a virtual program last year that was kind of nice, to raise money for Gary Sinise Foundation.
We raised money for Jason Mendez Fight Blindness Foundation. The last live show I did, was October of 2019, during AAO. I try and keep a balanced life, stay fit, listen to music. I always joke and say my OR is a modern-day Woodstock experience for my patients. They get drugs, they get a light show, they get music. What else could you want in your 10 to 15 minutes of glory getting new eyesight. They say, but you know Woodstock lasted three days. They always ask, can we get three days? No, you get your 10 to 15 minutes, then you leave.
Polly Neely: Difference is you leave your OR being able to see you left Woodstock not being able to see for 3 days.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah, you probably were pretty blind when you left Woodstock.
Polly Neely: That's awesome. And you do a lot with your boys. I've seen you on Facebook and whatever you're always out and about.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah. Well, my two of my sons are professional esports players. I don't know if you know our Aror The Chunk, Smite Pro he plays for Team Radiance. They're the World Champs from 2018 and they made it to Worlds last two years and fell short. It's hard to repeat, you know, in any professional sport. My other son, Lourlo, he's on Team Dignitas plays League of Legends professionally. They're both celebrities. They come back home, and everybody wants to sign their autographs and DJMJ, who? Dr. Jackson, who? They're doing great. My youngest son, he's a music guy doing music and creates his own albums and doing his stuff and doing college stuff right now and remote learning. And so, they're doing great.
Polly Neely: I want to ask you a really cool question, if you could have lunch with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: You know, I like to have lunch with, cause I'm a big fan, Batman. I have a 6’4” Batman in my bar. I'm all Batman freak. You've seen all that stuff, the Dark Night stuff. It would be kind of cool to have a live conversation lunch with the superhero himself, you know, cause I always say you haven't seen me and the Batman in the save room ever. You know, just saying.
Polly Neely: What is your most interesting patient case that stands out to you? Whether it's funny one or your most interesting patient and funny, memorable, sweet, whatever.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Oh God, I have so many stories. I've had one patient, obviously will remain nameless. I walked in, she’s a really high myope and she is seeing 20/20 the next day. I’m like, God, she's going to be so happy and hug me, she went from like a completely ruined life to now probably doing everything she wants in life. All she did, I walked in the room she screamed at me, “you made my hands bigger”. Because when you are really nearsighted, you correct it, you get a magnification effect. So, I’m like, “I didn't operate on your hands.”
Polly Neely: Let me ask you a question in hindsight, would you have done anything differently in your career path than what you've done now?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: What I would like is to have had the experience [to do a refractive surgery fellowship]. So I offer a refractive cataract surgery private practice fellowship. There's a bunch of us, Rob Weinstock, Bill Wiley, Ralph Chu, Steven Vold, that offer it. It's not university. I knew I wasn't going to be an academic, and back when I came out in ‘93, there was only cornea fellowship. There was no private practice refractive cataract surgery fellowship. I would have loved to have done that for a year because what I would have learned. I would have probably saved a lot of mistakes and learning curves and got a better head start early on over the years.
Polly Neely: What was your first refractive surgeon case?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: I started my first one, that's a good one. My first one was a PRK in November of 1995, on a malpractice attorney, first case. And I told him, “you know, you're my first case and n=1”. And he goes, “well I defend surgeons, so you're okay, I don’t go after them”. I go, “alright, you'll be defending me against you, I guess”. So he ended up perfect and still is to this day. And recently did a premium IOL on him, you know, this many years later.
Polly Neely: Brave, brave. I think most people would have said, you know what, I've got a great doc for you down the street let me give you his number.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: I was one of the few ones early on. There is a picture with me, with Dan Durrie, Perry Binder, Vance Thompson, and Marguerite McDonald, I'm like the young whippersnapper in the pictures. It was an Alcon picture for generation laser vision correction called, ‘The Pioneers of Laser Vision Correction’. My little young face was in the group. They started really young with all this. It was kind of Peter Hersh, but I think there are a lot of cool people in that picture, Dick Lindstrom.
Polly Neely: I think Manus Kraff was in that picture.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah, Manus was in that one. So, we were all down at Alcon, I was probably definitely the youngest. So, it's a good memory. So, I started early with it. That's kind of how I got into it, that kinda paved my way into the refractive cataract world. I trained all these docs on the Moria Microkeratome, at least 800 surgeons worldwide. I was their lead instructor for that. So, between that, and Alcon with the lasers, and everything early on, the refractive industry is what kind of made me who I was. And then kind of with time became more cataract involved. I have a monthly column I write for OSN, Ocular Surgery News on Healio.com. I just wrote and submitted my 85th monthly column. I called it, ‘Dawn of the DED: Time to Keep the Critters Away From the Ocular Surface’. You know, ‘Dawn of the Dead’ for dry eye disease come out.
My one last month, you ought to read it. Let me see, my one that just came out last month was ‘Drip Drop, Tick Tock: Are Presbyopia Drops Turning Back the Clock’. That was my last, I had to come up with a new one every month. It's not easy, 85. So I'm going to go to a 100. I talked to, you know, the guys Dave Mullin and all of them over at OSN, I told them when I get to 100, that’s it. My 100th issue is going to be, I'm going to pick, I always do my annual top 10 picks of the year, what happened that year? So, I'm going to do my top 10 columns, when I hit my 100. That'll be a nice cover, I'm going to close it out on number 100 and I still have to go 15 more.
Polly Neely: Wow. You know, I worked for OSN. I helped them launch their Asia and India papers.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Nice. Yeah. I forget, when did I meet you again? Polly?
Polly Neely: Marco, when you put in the refractive units.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Oh yeah, it was Marco. Yeah. It's like you know [Dr. Jackson rapping], “the OPD then it was the OPP and it’s like come on, everybody by OPD not an OPP”.
Polly Neely: But I go back to the Epic days.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Oh, yeah. Epic it was, like the first, I still have my first Epic from 1994, I think.
Polly Neely: Yeah, I was in your practice.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah. You were in there. I still have the original, I'm buying three more for my new building when it gets built.
Polly Neely: Yeah. I was working with Kathy Ruffatti at the time we were doing the process.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah. Kathy was just in the other day I saw her. She's still doing a bunch of other stuff, but I still see her all the time.
Polly Neely: I love Kathy.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: She's awesome.
Polly Neely: But you know what? There's so many good people in this industry. I've been so lucky to work with so many of them.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: It’s a small world, you know, it's a small world. You never leave. If you leave the eye world, you always come back.
Polly Neely: You can't leave.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: You try to leave. It's way worse on the other side, you know.
Polly Neely: I said, we're the most incestuous industry ever. It's like, you try to walk out, but you can't because you don't fit anywhere else anymore.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: You don't fit anywhere else. They look at you like you're not doctors, what the hell are you?
Polly Neely: Yeah. You don't fit. You don't fit.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: You’re not robotic. You know, you have personalities. What's wrong with you?
Polly Neely: I want to know. What did people say to you the first time that you got up on the stage and did your DJMJ for the ophthalmology group?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Well, so I've done like 33 shows at the Foundation Room at the Chicago House of Blues. I remember some of the local reps would bring some of their friends and they say come on in! One guy got in a fight with his own rep friend. He goes, “he's not a surgeon. There's no way you rep him, he’s a DJ, he’s not a surgeon.” That's kind of funny. That's exactly how I want it to be. But I have a 16-man crew now, I did a big show in honor of my younger brother who passed in 2018. It was a rough year. I did a big show, Celebrate Life, remember the Navy Pier with the ferris wheel thing and all that. It was pretty, that was my favorite DJ show, Celebrate Life, which not knowing the pandemic was coming, it was the perfect theme back then. That show was pretty crazy and everybody from my family came, my sons, everybody from Chicago land and from California. It was like 7,000 to 8,000 people on the Navy Pier at the height of that night.
Polly Neely: You're in a zone when you're up there, man, you are so in a zone. It's, it's crazy.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: It’s just fun, you know, Quentin Allen, DJ IQ, he's an eye surgeon in North Florida. He’s my buddy. He’s the past president, like me of Cedars Aspen, so that's another group I'm proud of. And I think of all the things; I'm president of elect for two years to follow Cynthia Matossian, who is the current President of ACES, the American College of Eye Surgeons. I’m a founding member of ACOS. I’m on the refractive cataract sub-committee of ASCRS. I'm part of the POC panel for AAO, I do my monthly column. I’m on the editorial boards of CRST, OSN, Advanced Ocular Care, what's a few others. I can't remember them all now.
Polly Neely: Wow, how do you find time to practice, Mitch?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Well, I just do it every day. I usually shut off the switch. But I don't really get to watch as many Netflix shows. I did a little bit during quarantine, but I didn't really get to watch many, because my whole life I'm always doing something.
Polly Neely: Yeah. Let me ask you a question. What did you learn during COVID that you're going to take forward? What are you doing different in your practice during COVID, that you're going to take forward post COVID, if we get to post COVID.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: I mean, we're just like everybody else. It's hard as my practice spacing is small and I was busy before, so it's hard to get that many people in the practice. When I have my new building, hopefully to break around this summer and be in it by next year, next summer 2022, hopefully. So we're redesigning the whole building to be pandemic proof too. So we're even putting it in the filtration system, the HEPA filter system stuff. We changed everything; it'll be all designed to be COVID or other pandemic friendly situations. But we're learning. I guess that’s the good thing, because I'm getting a low interest rate for my new building. COVID brought a low interest rate for me. We're learning how we're going to design the new building. We're changing things for all we’re going to do before it derailed my whole project. And in a way, it's a good thing. It's good that I didn't build it in the middle of it, that would have been bad.
Polly Neely: It is. That's awesome. Well, I have one more question for you and then I'm gonna let you go enjoy your night, what's left of it for ya. But you’ve been in this industry quite a while, so how have you seen technology in ophthalmology transition since you've been in the industry? Where, what are your predictions for technology in the next 10 to 15 years in this industry?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: So let's start. This is a good thing because the reason why I became an ophthalmologist, back in the day, my dad’s now passed, but he lived to about 85. Seventy or eighty years ago, when he was living in Scotland, outside of Glasgow, there was a bacterial meningitis outbreak and back then they had no antibiotics. So seven of them, best friends at the age eight, imagine this happening, all passed. One went deaf, and my dad lost sight in his one eye and was partially sighted in the other eye. And he went on to become a well-known attorney in Southern California and lived his whole life, raised three kids, and got me to where I had to be and did everything in life. So I wanted to become an ophthalmologist to figure out a way to fix his eyes and kinda, that's why I do a lot of clinical research.
He had an optic neuritis from the bacterial meningitis. I mean that's why I've been involved with at least 40 to 50 clinical trials, medical monitor of many, I'm global medical director for a presbyopia study right now, outside the US for a laser scleral treatment. I've been involved at presbyopia eye drops, lens implants, and all these dry eyes, so many dry eyes studies, and a lot of things. It's kind of nice to see everything that I use now, I was part of in the past. We're still, we got like six studies we're in right now and keeping going on that. But the future, I mean, how it's changed. I remember starting cataract surgery back in residency, you know, the extra cap cases, I even did a couple of few intra caps believe it or not. Patients would take at least a month to six months to get what they see in one day now. I tell patients that. So, as you feel lucky, because what you can do it in one day. When I started, it took 6 months sometimes to get patients where you are at in one day. I think in the future, I don't think there'll be any eye surgeons, terminator land.
Polly Neely: Don't say that, I’ll have no job. So let's not talk about that. You know.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: I know, I think really technology is going to evolve where there will be kinda no true healing responses. Like we'll be able to put a lens in and that will be perfect. You know, we already got like light adjustable lens as a start of that, but still a lot more visits and things you gotta do. But the whole goal is to achieve perfection for that patient. So, I think everything's going to be customized for the future. Even be safer, faster healing, presbyopia, dry eye, glaucoma, macular degeneration are probably the four big ones in my opinion to be able to treat. You see patients now with macular degeneration where we can do injections now, which was a big step. But it would be nice to see all these dry AMD patients, give some medicine and say see ya again. That's the future, you know, they got gene therapy for these inherited retinal disorders.
IOLs there is going to be, you know, refractive shape indexing and other things, true accommodating IOLs that’s all in the future and there’s going to be more beyond that, I'm sure. Already there are presbyopia drops, it'll be a nice bridge to that. There's a lot of those companies coming out now, dry eye, look how many. It was just Restasis for 13 years and all of a sudden, we got like from one thing to like, not just pharma, but thermal pulsation devices. We have like 35 different treatment options for dry eye now or ocular surface disease and a lot more on the horizon. It's going to keep getting better. And automation is going to be a big thing for all of us, even as surgeons, an automation learning curve. We want to reduce the learning curve and get training for young ophthalmologists better. Getting our young ophthalmologists trained, things like we're doing, the refractive cataract fellowship, is kind of one of the things outside of traditional university programs I think is good for those who want to go into private practice, it's a good learning. Like I said, I wish I had that opportunity.
Polly Neely: I think the generations coming are going to have more business acumen than what we've seen. You know, what we had coming out because we were doctors, and we didn’t know there was a business. You were mentioning dry eye, you use Bruder, right? The Bruder Mask.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: I use Bruder. I love Bruder. Yeah. Great, great technology.
Polly Neely: It's fun to watch. I use it myself. I use some, I use more of the big sinus thing. I love the sinus one. It's like when I’m having a bad day.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah. Look, I have it right on my desk.
Polly Neely: No, you don’t.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Bruder pre-surgical kit, sitting right on my desk.
Polly Neely: Stan's going to grab you and hug you, next time he sees you.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah. Pre-surgical kits. We just started kind of, we just started implementing it. We have to order a bunch more, but that's kind of more on my optometrist at my practice. Dr. Bollinger, she has 25 years of experience, she's awesome. I brought her in a couple of years ago and she's made a world of a difference and she's kind of running our dry spa. And when we have our new building, we're going to add a couple more specialists. And we’ll have an aesthetics spa, we're going to be doing IOR in-office-cataract surgery. On to the future, everything's moving that way.
Polly Neely: You'll be one of the firsts. You'll be out there and then you'll be mentoring all these ones coming up, just like you got mentored, and you'll be grabbing them.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah, it's nice where I'm on my third fellow. So nice to have hopefully a little legacy when I'm finally done, you know. I call them the JEdi masters, they're out there.
Polly Neely: Is they call the Darth Vader thing? What is it?
Dr. Mitch Jackson: No, no, we call ourselves JEdis for Jackson Eye (JE) in our practice. You know, so I just call them JEdi masters. I always call them out near the end of the year when they're operating with me and talking through the whole case. They go, oh shoot, I shouldn't have talked through the whole case. I go, no you've now become a JEdi Master, because you did the whole case without thinking about what you were doing, you actually just did it. So now you are officially ready for the real world.
Polly Neely: You graduated.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Yeah.
Polly Neely: Dr. Jackson, thank you so much for joining us this evening. You are always awesome to talk to and we’ll be looking to you for our next segment.
Dr. Mitch Jackson: Remember: Celebrate Life, that's my motto.
Focus Through the Generations is supported by Bruder Healthcare Company.
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