From Legacy to Modern: How Eye Surgeons Group Transformed Their IT Infrastructure with Abacus
At a Glance
Client: Eye Surgeons Group (ESG)
Industry: Ophthalmology Practice
Abacus Service: mCare, CyberCore, Network Redesign, Telecommunications,
Compliance: HIPAA
The Challenge
When Sarah LeGoff joined Eye Surgeons Group (ESG) as COO in the summer of 2022, she inherited more than a new title — she inherited a technology crisis in the making. The organization was running on outdated infrastructure, managing a fragmented internal IT department, and facing a pivotal decision: overhaul their existing EHR system or make the leap to something new entirely.
“It was like a half step up from paper charts and just difficult enough to confuse you,” Sarah recalled of their legacy NextGen system.
ESG needed a modern EHR, and that meant everything underneath it — the networks, the hardware, the wireless infrastructure — would have to come up to speed as well.
The decision to move to ModMed as their new EHR was made after extensive due diligence, but it quickly became clear that a new EHR was only part of the equation. Their internal IT team, while familiar, lacked the infrastructure, vendor relationships, and bandwidth to support such a sweeping transformation. Access credentials from departed employees were unaccounted for, and equipment was aging. In one particularly telling example, the organization discovered that their email domain had lapsed and was being held by an overseas registrar — a detail a former IT employee had never disclosed — and they had to scramble to reclaim their own website and email after a lapsed renewal. It was, as Sarah put it, “a perfect storm.”
The Solution
Sarah had already been evaluating several IT companies when she encountered Abacus at the ASOA conference. There, she outlined exactly what ESG needed: a true IT partner that also presented cost savings compared to the internal IT department.
What followed was months of collaborative groundwork — before ESG ever signed a contract. The Abacus team worked alongside Sarah building spreadsheets, modeling costs, and helping her build the internal business case she needed to bring skeptical stakeholders on board.
“The amount that they handled before even getting the business was impressive,” Sarah said of that pre-sales period. When it came time to make a final recommendation to ownership, the decision was clear: Abacus offered not only a compelling cost and service proposition, but a team that had already demonstrated its commitment.
ESG’s transition was anything but simple with multiple locations, a new phone system coming online within months of the IT rollout, and a go-live date for ModMed that couldn’t move.
“[The situation] was a fly by the seat of your pants, jump in the deep end,” Sarah said. “We signed the contract and very soon thereafter we had people on the ground.”
There were challenges along the way. Three locations required unexpected recabling and backup circuits had to be deployed during the go-live period with phone transitions following closely behind.
Internally, staff who were accustomed to an on-site IT presence struggled to adapt to a ticketing and support model where the work happened behind the scenes. To address this, ESG ran an internal communication campaign to help staff understand the new support process, and Abacus helped flag high-priority contacts so that urgent issues received immediate escalation.
The Results
Several years later, ESG sees continued benefits from partnering with Abacus.
Significant Cost Reduction: By consolidating fragmented IT contracts, eliminating internal IT staffing costs, and renegotiating telecommunications, ESG dramatically reduced its overall technology spend — while simultaneously upgrading its infrastructure.
Dramatically Reduced Downtime: Internet and connectivity outages, which had been a regular occurrence under the previous setup, are now rare. “Our downtime was a lot higher than it is now,” Sarah said. “Knowing how little it happens compared to before — I couldn’t complain for a minute.”
Modernized Infrastructure: Every location now operates with dedicated bandwidth and built-in redundancy. Cybersecurity protections, firewalls, and system updates that were previously inconsistent are now managed proactively.
A Responsive, Accountable Partner: For Sarah, the most valuable benefit has been access.
“If I need a full budget review, I can get it. If I need to go over where we stand on a Windows update, I can get a full list. I’m not having to wait on someone to understand what I’m asking for before they start on it. The success that I’ve had with them — the responsiveness, and the amount of money I’ve been able to save while still bringing this company into this century — has been incredible.”
Why Abacus
What made the difference for ESG wasn’t just technology; it was a team that showed up, stayed accountable, and treated the relationship as their own. “I think the people are going to be what makes the difference across the board,” said Emily at the beginning of the engagement.
From the start, the Abacus team approached the engagement as more than a vendor relationship by working closely through the onboarding and staying connected day-to-day. By building a partnership, we understood the environment deeply and operated as a natural extension of ESG’s internal IT team.
That depth of understanding proved critical early on when ESG’s Citrix environment began experiencing major issues with no clear root cause. Abacus stepped in quickly to diagnose and resolve the problem, restoring stability within a week and avoiding the need for a costly vendor support contract, saving the client a significant unplanned expense.
One of the most significant technical overhauls was the network itself. Abacus discovered that ESG had been running all of its locations off a single shared fiber ring — one access point to the internet for the entire organization. Abacus replaced it with dedicated circuits and redundancy at every location, quadrupling bandwidth while cutting monthly costs by approximately $6,000–$7,000.
Learn more about how Abacus supports its healthcare clients here.