General Info

A Florida native, Dr. Shoemaker gained early admission to medical school and received combined B.S. and M.D. degrees from the University of Florida. Accepted without the usual requirement of an internship, he then completed a residency in Ophthalmology at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. In 1983, Dr. Shoemaker founded Center For Sight, which is now acclaimed as one of the country’s finest eye care facilities. Dr. Shoemaker is a “super specialist,” a doctor who devotes his entire practice to one discipline, in this case, cataract and lens replacement surgery. Dr. Shoemaker is singularly focused on delivering unsurpassed results and consequent to that commitment, he has performed over 100,000 cataract procedures, resulting in Center For Sight being ranked #1 in the U.S. for advanced lens surgery. Dr. Shoemaker is board-certified by both the American Board of Ophthalmology and the American Board of Eye Surgery and is consistently honored as one of America’s “Top Doctors” by Castle Connolly Medical. He has been named a “Top Doctor” by U.S. News and World Report and is included on the Premier Surgeon 300, a list of the most influential eye surgeons in the United States. He was recently honored with the “Compassionate Doctor Award” due to the patient reviews he received on Vitals.com. Locally, Dr. Shoemaker was voted “Best Ophthalmologist” and received the “Greater Good” Award for his leadership of Mission Cataract. In 2012, Dr. Shoemaker established the Center For Sight Foundation in order to continue his 25-year commitment of providing sight-saving surgeries to people with no means to pay. The Center For Sight Foundation provides over 100 free sight-saving cataract surgeries each year. Dr. Shoemaker is married with two grown children and a new addition, also named David. He and his wife, Yara, make their home in Sarasota close to the water, where he enjoys his favorite pastimes of sculling, cycling and flats fishing.