You would expect an optometrist to have good vision. Equally as impressive has been Dr. Clint Taylor’s work, commitment, and foresight of a brighter future for the community he calls home. Dr. Clint Taylor has provided vision services in Carmi for 21 years now. Taylor has been sparsely available for Kiwanis meetings for the last year since taking on the Presidency at the Illinois Optometric Association in September of 2025. He was in attendance Thursday to talk about his work leading the organization over the last 300 days.
Taylor’s interest in the profession began as a teen.
Yeah, I was 14. I remember it very well. We pulled up to a sporting goods store in Paducah to buy basketball shoes and we were sitting in the car looking in the store and dad said ‘well they’ve got a bunch of shoes over there’ and I said ‘where?’. He said ‘over there’ and I said, ‘well I don’t see any shoes.’ He took his glasses off and put them on me. (laughs)…and there were a bunch of shoes over there. So we went and saw Dr. Eubanks.
After studying and graduating from the University of Indiana’s School of Optometry, Taylor went to work with Dr. R.K. Ebmeier in the interest of buying the practice which he did. A decade ago, Taylor relocated to a state-of-the-art facility on Falcon Avenue near the SIC campus. On joining the Illinois Optometric Association, he said it was about joining with others to form a coalition aimed at helping them serve patients, which is ultimately what they want to do.
So every industry has challenges and threats and optometry is no different. We want to provide patient care. But the healthcare world is a wild and wooly place. There are bad actors out there who will take advantage of patients; there are insurance companies way more interested in making money than taking care of patients. Even our own government can make it very difficult to follow regulations and red tape, especially for someone like me who’s on my own. Those are some of the things the IOA is looking out for.
Taylor says there are 2,600 practicing Optometrists in Illinois and in addition to working for the industry, they’re also advocating for advances in healthcare and sharing information that’s making a real difference for patients.
One is a contact lens that has amniotic tissue from cord blood. You actually put that on the eye and it regenerates tissue. It is amazing. I’ve seen patients come in with terrible infections, terrible injuries and you think they’re going to have scarring that could limit their vision for life. You put this lens on there and they come back a few days later and it’s regenerated the tissue.
Taylor also talked about advances in myopia and cataract procedures. Additionally, and one of Taylor’s focuses has been on legislative action. He says 15 years ago, Illinois mandated that youngsters heading into kindergarten had to have a comprehensive eye exam before starting school. While he was initially not a huge fan, he says he’s seen it pay dividends for those kids and their future.
And to be honest, when that law was passed I wasn’t a huge fan because I don’t like the government telling you what you have to do with your kids. But, in the last 15 years, we have found so many kids who couldn’t see. They didn’t know and the parents didn’t know. We want to get those kids in the best position and best advantage they can get when they start kindergarten.
It’s said in technology, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Similarly, Taylor says the IOA serves an important role and he’s learned from a legislative perspective…
If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. There are people in optometry…it’s a legislated profession. We can only do what we can do…we can only see the patients we see, we can only do the procedures we do, we can only prescribe the medication we prescribe because we fought for that. If you stop fighting for that, it will be taken away.
Taylor is still far from retirement, but he is looking to grow. When he built the new practice in 2016, he built it for two optometrists because he says he knew with growth, there would be a need. He says he’s still looking and that’s also being addressed with the Association by trying to tackle the sometimes quarter of a million dollars worth of student debt that many optometrists face after more than 8 years of schooling.
Learn more about the Illinois Optometric Association at https://illinois.aoa.org/. Learn more about Taylor Eye Care by visiting https://www.tayloreyecare.com/, finding them on social media, or calling 618-382-4683.