Our History
Pacific Eye Associates is one of the largest private ophthalmology practices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our physicians practice general and subspecialty ophthalmology, offering full medical and surgical eye care under one roof. That scope took decades to build.
Early Beginnings
The story starts in the early 1900s, when Dr. Hans Barkan opened his ophthalmology practice in San Francisco. Dr. Jerry Bettman and Dr. Gilbert Cleasby joined him soon after, and the three built reputations that reached across the nation, laying groundwork for what would eventually become PEA.
Pacific Ophthalmic Consultants
Dr. Wayne Fung joined Dr. Cleasby’s office in 1968, and Dr. Robert Webster followed a year later. By 1978, Drs. Fung, Webster, and Arthur Allen had formed their own practice: Pacific Ophthalmic Consultants (POC). Dr. Richard Abbott joined shortly after.
Pacific Eye Associates
POC moved into the newly opened Pacific Professional Building in 1985 — the location PEA still calls home today — and Dr. William Stewart joined around the same time. A decade later, POC merged with CPMC’s ophthalmology teaching faculty and took a new name: Pacific Eye Associates.
Our medical staff has changed many times since, as physicians have taken faculty positions, retired, left for fellowships, moved away, joined other practices, or opened one of their own. A few names have stayed constant, though: Drs. Anne Fung and Danny Lin, who trained together as residents at Stanford before joining PEA in 2004, have both remained with the practice since — Dr. Lin now serves as PEA’s President. Dr. David Heiden, who joined shortly after the merger, remains with the practice today as well.
Where We Are Today
The idea that drove our founders in 1985 — one practice where a patient could get any kind of eye care they needed — is still what defines PEA today: general ophthalmology, subspecialty care, and optometry, all under one roof, from physicians who work a few steps from each other.
