Premium IOL’s is it worth it

Traveling over multiple Midwestern states, I ask surgeons what works for them in their practice, or what is a new problem for them today.  In the market, one common factor continually popping up from today’s surgeon is “marketing”.

Many of the surgeons said that their patients sell the new IOL’s for them by spreading word of mouth, at the coffee shop, card club, church/ synagogue and any community gathering.  The “holy cow” effect sells the new lenses for them.  This is free marketing at its best but we need to remember the small few who can destroy are create hours of additional re-education, because of a negative comment.  (Just think of United States politics on either side)

Now in real life we know that not every person will be happy.  While attending a business seminar a number of 12% was thrown out as individuals who “should complain” about price and the 80/20 percentage rule still remains, people in general just complain but are satisfied.  These numbers for business are to be guidelines but how could a surgeon survive if he ran his practice with these numbers?

We know that your practice is not business and the two do not go hand in hand but how are you addressing the premium IOL’s?  You have some of your patients selling your premium IOL’s and then you have the “Negative Neds” nullifying your free marketing campaign.

Still inquisitive on the issue, I asked a vendor representative what he was witnessing.  His answer was that patient demand is driving and pushing the new lenses.  The patient in today’s market is becoming savier to the product and they do their own education.  The “holy cow” patient reiterates that more patients should be informed by you about the new lenses during an evaluation.  We have a double push, an extremely happy post –op patient and a new era of self-educating patient ready to listen.

All of the pre marketing during the evaluation will provide that you identify and educate the new patient.  This will in turn provide a larger base of happy patients and reduce the complaining patient base.  The “Negative Neds” will never go away but you will be managing the bases by marketing the premium IOL to the premium patient.

As for all surgeons, your life revolves around time.  Too little and not enough and how can I add time to market and educate patients on premium IOL’s.  That question will be for another day on our site, www.cataractoutsourcing.com but I will throw out a site, Patient Education Concepts, to make you think.

http://www.iolcounselor.com/

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!