The Eye Center of North Florida History
The Eye Center of North Florida was formed in 1999 following the merger of the Newberry Eye Clinic and the Gulf Coast Eye Clinic, two of the oldest, most established and trusted eye care practices in the Florida panhandle. The Newberry group, founded by Dr. Grant Newberry, had a long history of providing comprehensive optometric services and was located at 470 Harrison Avenue. The Gulf Coast Group housed at 211 East 11th Street, was founded in the mid 1950s by Dr. Wager and consisted of ophthalmologists. The two groups worked together to care for patient needs in Panama City.
In 1998, however, it became evident that the strengths and diverse training of the physicians as a whole were better positioned to meet the growing needs of our community. The physicians realized that to create a regionally recognized state of the art eye care facility and surgery center, they needed to create a forward-looking mission statement, and they knew they could better achieve their goals by working together. It was decided to build an Eye Center that had all the optometric and ophthalmologic specialties under one roof to truly provide comprehensive eye care to the community. It would allow the individual physicians to develop their specialties, foster participation in research and development of ocular disease and surgery, and consolidate the combined practice experience of the group to better serve the specific needs of each patient.
