South Sound Eye Care, Lakewood: NPI Registry Record and Eye Exam Cost Context
What the registry record says
- NPI number
- 1902850308
- Legal business name
- Kathy Kim OD & Associates, PLLC
- Registered trading name
- South Sound Eye Care
- Primary registered specialty
- Optometrist (152W00000X)
- Practice location
- 8520 Steilacoom Blvd SW, Suite 101
Lakewood, WA 98498-4773 - Phone on the record
- (253) 475-3937
- NPI issued
- May 20, 2006
- Record last updated by the practice
- April 21, 2025
- Registry status
- NPI registry record, active as reported by CMS October 2026
- Metro area
- Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
- County
- Pierce County
- Location precision
- Street address matched by the US Census geocoder
Reading this record
The practice bills under the legal name Kathy Kim OD & Associates, PLLC and registered South Sound Eye Care as its trading name, so an insurance statement may show a name that does not match the sign on the door. The entry was refreshed in April 2025, putting it among the 92 of 508 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue records updated in 2024 or later, so the contact details are more likely to be current than most of this metro.
For local context: Lakewood holds 7 registered eye care practices in this snapshot, 6 of them optometry and 1 ophthalmology, in ZIP codes including 98498. No other practice in the city took its NPI earlier than this one, which makes it the longest-registered address here. The closest is Rainier Family Eye Care, PLLC in Lakewood, 1.4 miles away.
None of this is a licensing check. CMS issues an NPI so a provider can be identified in billing transactions, and states plainly that issuance does not ensure or validate that the holder is licensed or credentialed. The Washington boards hold the licensing record, and the practice itself is the only source for what it charges today.
Nearest registered practices
210 other registered eye care practices sit within 25 miles of this address, a radius that does not stop at the metro boundary. Inside the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro itself there are 508, 6 of them elsewhere in Lakewood. The closest 5 are below, measured straight line between registered addresses.
| Practice | City | Registered as | Distance | Phone on record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rainier Family Eye Care, PLLC | Lakewood | Optometry | 1.4 mi | (253) 582-9089 |
| Bridgeport Vision Clinic | Lakewood | Optometry | 1.6 mi | (253) 588-2254 |
| Bridgeport Family Vision Clinic, PLLC | Lakewood | Optometry | 1.6 mi | (253) 584-2020 |
| David R Benson MD OD PLLC | Lakewood | Ophthalmology | 1.9 mi | (253) 584-1777 |
| America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses | Lakewood | Optometry | 2.0 mi | (253) 620-5679 |
Distances are straight line between registered practice locations, not driving distance. Records placed at a ZIP centroid rather than a matched street address are excluded from this comparison.
What to expect to pay at an optometry practice like this
The NPI registry holds no prices, so nothing here is a quote from South Sound Eye Care, and independent optometry practices do not publish fee schedules. Customers report paying $120 to $200 at this kind of practice without insurance, which is a reported band rather than a published price. The nearest published figure is $95, the median starting fee across the 1,280 US retail optical stores that print one (30 September 2026), and Medicare pays $149.64 for a comprehensive new-patient exam (CPT 92004). Ask South Sound Eye Care for its self-pay price.
Ask two things when you call: whether the quoted fee includes the refraction, and what a contact lens fitting adds if you wear lenses (the median published contact-lens fee is $129). A comprehensive exam is $80 to $120 at the middle half of stores that print a price. If price is the deciding factor, the 508 practices on the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue page give you the full local field to call around.