Meredith Bay Laser Center’s new owner hosting open house on May 10

MEREDITH — Kara Doberstein, new owner of the Meredith Bay Laser and Skin Care Center, said that the best part of her new venture is also what she enjoyed as a nurse practitioner: developing relationships with patients and helping them to address concerns.

In fact, those relationships are enhanced at her clinic, which can operate outside of parameters set by insurance companies. At Meredith Bay Laser, each client is allotted an hour’s worth of time to meet with a practitioner, as opposed to the norm in primary care, which is 15 minutes.

“The advantage to this field is, because we don’t do a lot of insurance work, my patients aren’t limited to what insurance says I can do or can’t do,” Doberstein said.

Doberstein, who closed on the business at the end of March, came to own Meredith Bay Laser as a matter of circumstance.

Aside from a short time working in Pennsylvania, Doberstein has called New Hampshire home since she was a teenager. 

“My background is all in nursing,” she said. She earned her nursing degree from Saint Anselm College, in Manchester, and worked as an ICU nurse at Elliot Hospital. She attended Rivier College, in Nashua, for her master’s degree, then became a nurse practitioner.

To become a nurse practitioner, Doberstein needed to work with a preceptor, someone who could mentor and support her training. Her preceptor was Mary Bidgood-Wilson, a nurse practitioner who saw patients in Moultonborough – and who in 2007 also founded the Meredith Bay Laser and Skin Care Center, located in the Fitness Edge building near the Meredith Traffic Circle. The two stayed in touch through a professional association. When Bidgood-Wilson was ready to sell her business, Doberstein was ready to consider a new way to treat patients.

Meredith Bay Laser offers an exhaustive list of services that clients can use to change their appearance. Though the treatments are topical, she said that the effect is more than superficial.

“This gives me a chance to make a difference in people’s self-esteem and confidence. If you like what see in the mirror and feel confident about how you look in the office, hold you head a little higher, that’s a wonderful gift to give to somebody,” Doberstein said.

Nearly all of the Laser and Skin Care Center’s clients are repeat customers, Doberstein said, so she still has the chance to develop long-term relationships with patients.

Those patients are overwhelmingly women. Doberstein sees a huge growth opportunity by welcoming men into her business, and by reaching out to people who may be reluctant to seek aesthetic therapies. A barricade to that growth is an attitude that her services are frivilous, or that only a vain person would solicit them.

“Our response to that is, we strive to help people age gracefully. We’re not going to make a 45 year-old woman look like she is 18. If we can soften the aging process, make her look like herself, just a little refreshed, that’s a really great thing… We know we’re not a necessity for a lot of people, but we do feel like we add value to their life. Our clients are individuals interested in investing in themselves.”

Meredith Bay Laser and Skin Care Center will be hosting an open house on May 10, from 3 to 7 p.m., featuring door prizes and a free, full-face consultation.