Decision Time

Do certain types of patients take longer than others to schedule LASIK surgery?

Refractive surgeons have long tried to understand why some patients delay their decision to have LASIK after their consultation. Reasons typically involve lingering fear, concern over cost, and/or waiting for a specific event to occur. We were curious to understand the impact of time on the decision process and if the delay in signing up for surgery is influenced by demographic or physiological patient characteristics. Our goal was to see if any differences emerged that might prove instructive for surgeons and their staff to do a better job in the consultative and follow-up process. We retrospectively analyzed demographic data on more than 11, 000 LASIK procedures performed at the Gordon Binder Weiss Eye Institute from 1997 through 2008. All cases performed by Dr. Binder were entered into a commercially available database (Outcomes Analysis Software, Inc. , San Diego, CA). Because of the large amount of data available, we chose to limit our analysis to two issues. First, from the time of the initial consultation, how long do patients typically take to decide to schedule surgery? Second, are there differences in the characteristics of these patients that could meaningfully affect how we educate and/or follow up with them around the time of the consultation?

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