Director of Eye & Vision Services
Chief of Optometry
NYC Health + Hospitals/Gouverneur

A World Crisp and Alive

Blending clinical expertise with a warm, supportive manner, Dr. Andrea N. Cotler oversees Eye Care services and provides care for residents of NYC Health + Hospitals/Gouverneur. She is known as a dedicated doctor who will rearrange her schedule to meet residents’ needs including urgent, serious and unresolved eye issues.

The day she walked out of her optometrist’s office “wearing contact lenses for the first time” inspired Dr. Cotler to become a doctor. “The world appeared crisp and alive,” she says. “Becoming aware of what I had been missing before that moment inspired me to help others experience that same joy.”

Dr. Cotler earned her B.S. at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and her Doctor of Optometry at SUNY College of Optometry. She did her residency in Ocular Disease/ Primary Care Optometry at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – New York Harbor Health Care System, and worked in private practice. She has presented on eye disease subjects at American Academy of Optometry meetings and academic venues.

She has worked at Gouverneur since 2016 and counts as one of her proudest accomplishments, improvements to patient access to ophthalmic diagnostic equipment used to screen for and manage sightthreatening diseases like glaucoma and macular degeneration.

“I am proud to say that we now provide same-day access for all of our diagnostic imaging equipment and have dramatically reduced time to next available visual field exam.”

Dr. Cotler finds it particularly satisfying to help patients “solve problems.” She is fortunate, she says, “to work with amazing optometry interns each day, and each patient encounter is an opportunity to share my experience.”

“Interacting with my patients and students is rewarding and energizing,” she says.

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