Optometric Director (Optometry Lead) - Contractor

Kansas Health Science Center•Wichita, KS

About The Position

Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine (KansasCOM), a college of Kansas Health Science University, Inc., seeks a licensed optometrist to serve as Optometric Director for its Rural Health Transformation Program. The program deploys autonomous artificial-intelligence diabetic retinopathy screening at up to seven rural primary-care and Federally Qualified Health Center sites in Kansas, and a robotic telehealth slit lamp at a rural clinical site. This is a part-time independent-contractor engagement for a fixed fee, averaging approximately 0.2 FTE over the grant term. The work is administrative and focused on clinical quality oversight. The Optometric Director will not examine, diagnose, or treat patients or interpret individual patient images under this engagement; patient-care decisions remain with treating providers at participating sites. The engagement runs from October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2027. The fixed fee is $30,000, paid in equal monthly installments. Travel to sites outside Sedgwick County is reimbursed at applicable State of Kansas travel rates and is separate from the fixed fee. The agreement is subject to prior written approval by KDHE and federal award requirements, including records-retention and access provisions. The contractor is responsible for their own taxes and benefits and is not covered by KansasCOM employee benefits or workers’ compensation. The contractor must comply with applicable HIPAA and site policies, and other specified agreement requirements. The selected contractor will oversee screening quality across participating sites; establish and maintain referral workflows and closed-loop tracking; coordinate with site clinical leadership on care-management and EHR workflows; develop program-level guidance for screening-result categories and patient communications; and contribute to onboarding, training, protocol and evaluation activities, data interpretation, reporting, and dissemination. The role includes project-team meetings approximately twice monthly.

Requirements

Doctor of Optometry degree and current, unrestricted Kansas optometry license in good standing.
Experience practicing in, or having a formal co-management relationship with, an ophthalmology practice, in addition to optometric practice experience.
Ocular disease management experience, including management or co-management of diabetic eye disease, glaucoma, or other chronic ocular disease consistent with Kansas scope of practice.
Experience with diabetic eye testing and management, including dilated examination, retinal imaging (fundus photography and/or OCT), grading or interpretation of diabetic retinopathy findings, and coordination with primary care or endocrinology.
Experience providing eye care to underserved populations, such as in an FQHC, rural health clinic, safety-net hospital, community health program, or comparable setting serving uninsured, Medicaid, or rural patients.
Must not be excluded or debarred from federal health care or procurement programs.
Confirm availability during the grant term, including any limits arising from current employment.
Selected contractor must comply with HIPAA and participating-site policies, sign a conflict-of-interest disclosure, and carry automobile insurance for any vehicle used for site travel.
Selected contractor must complete human-subjects (CITI) training if listed on the project’s IRB-approved protocol.
A respondent employed by a participating site must disclose that employment and recuse from KansasCOM decisions concerning that site.

Responsibilities

Provide oversight of diabetic retinopathy screening quality at participating sites, review image-quality and positive-screen metrics, and recommend corrective action.
Establish, document, and manage referral workflows for patients with positive or ungradable screening results at each site, track completed referrals, and ensure appropriate compliance with scheduled subspecialty appointments.
Work with site clinical leadership to integrate screening and referral into existing diabetic care-management programs and EHR workflows, and serve as the clinical representative in EHR/IT integration planning.
Develop and maintain written program-level guidance for site staff on negative, positive, and ungradable screening-result categories and standard patient-communication language; support alignment of protocols across sites.
Participate in site onboarding and training with the Clinical Trainer.
Provide clinical input to the IRB-approved protocol and program evaluation.
Contribute to data interpretation, reports to KDHE, and dissemination.
Participate in project-team meetings approximately twice monthly.