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February 26, 2007
The IOL Counselor … a cataract surgeon’s new best friend?
Eyeworld Feb 2007
Patient education has always played a vital role in the success of cataract surgery, and the newly developed IOL Counselor (Patient Education Concepts Inc., in partnership with Eyeland Design Network, Germany) takes patient education of refractive cataract surgery and premium IOL implantation to the next level. The IOL Counselor is a cumulative set of educational tools designed to “elevate the communication skills of doctors and cataract counselors” who may not be comfortable with or lack experience in sales and closing skills. The Counselor is not an informed consent tool, per se, but it does include disclaimers and signed consent forms (acknowledging that simulations are not guarantees of post-surgical visual acuity), thereby providing the surgeon with some degree of protection. The IOL Counselor also includes financial software supplied by CareCredit, which calculates and presents payment options based on the patients’ Medicare status and provides a built-in forum to discuss the fiscal aspect of the surgery—often a difficult discussion between patient and surgical counselor.
The use of generic, non-scientific images has created a unique situation from a marketing perspective as both Alcon Laboratories, Inc. (Fort Worth, Texas, makers of ReSTOR) and Advanced Medical Optics, (Santa Ana, Calif., makers of ReZoom) have joined forces to aid in its initial launch.....
Posted by mehdi khanlari at February 26, 2007 11:55 PM