Lasik What Was Lasik Vision\'s

Lasik

What was Lasik Vision's competitive priority?

As a company, Lasik Vision wished to maximize profits by expanding its customer base and cutting costs wherever possible. From a business standpoint, this seems to make sense, especially given that Lasik was a first-mover in the industry. The company fired employees to cut costs to finance its initial expansion and required the remaining individuals to 'pick up the slack.' Michel Henderson, the business mastermind behind Lasik, even considered eliminating the use of costly ultrasound scanners, technology that improved the effectiveness of the surgery. To increase the customer base, the company did not work through optometrists to secure patient referrals, rather it advertised directly to potential patents. It kept costs low and patient turnover high. Mass volume and low costs and standardization were vital to Lasik's early success.

Is this an appropriate approach to the industry?

The standardized approach of mass volume sales at low cost has been a boon to many industries, such as fast food. For health care, however, this model is extremely problematic. The typical selling point of standardized commercial goods is that 'everyone wants/must have X.' However, not every individual is a good candidate for corrective eye surgery. The most obvious repercussions of this strategy are the lawsuits that result from malpractice, when patients who are poor candidates receive the surgery. If someone who is lactose intolerant sees a commercial for a Baskin Robbins ice cream and has a sundae, his or her only consequences are indigestion. If someone without the ability to evaluate his or her medical condition is persuaded by a Lasik ad that it would be wonderful to wake up in the morning and not need glasses or contact lenses, the consequences could be dire. Employees at Lasik Vision were primed to sell, not to critically evaluate patient health and everything possible was done to eliminate the middleperson of the optometrist, whose main priority was patient health, not selling the surgery.

One reason the technicians and staff at Lasik were so focused on sales was that many employees were poorly trained, or overburdened, as the company was so focused on cutting costs. Giving quality care with good technology was a low priority, because by definition the surgery had no 'repeat' customers. Like companies that sell pricey gym equipment, the priority was getting the customer in through the door, not how the customer was treated afterwards. The only customers way customers could show they were dissatisfied was through the courts.

Although on the surface, Lasik's model may have generated high revenue and expanded the company's outreach in the short run, in the long run, the damage done to the company through lawsuits and bad word-of-mouth was not worth the savings, and demonstrates the inappropriate nature of a high volume/low cost model for the healthcare industry.