Understanding and Acceptance of Eye

Understanding and acceptance of eye care treatment was poor in India. Cost was other important reason for poor acceptance of eye care service among rural population. Fear for surgeries was another reason attributed to the poor eye care treatment percent in India. Most of these surgeries were free or were offered at subsidized price, patients often did not make the trip to the base hospital as they could not afford the cost of transportation, lost wages, food and accommodation.

B. Cost Reduction Strategies

1. Human Resource Optimization

Surgeons' productivity at Aravind Eye Care was six times greater than that of surgeons elsewhere. The productivity of doctors was also increased as each surgeon worked on two operation tables alternately. Paramedical staff and medical officers were involved in the in the routine tasks so that the routine job did not required doctors attention. This eventually lead to cost optimization for the hospital.

2. Technology

Aurolab was established to produce quality products at affordable cost. Aurolab was able to reduce the production costs so that it was priced at 10 percent less than market price. Technology was also used to enhance performance, for example, communication technology helped to make information available to the right personnel, which reduced the throughput time. This also reduced the response time of the complaints. Thus unwanted cost in terms of time and duplicity of work could be avoided.

3. Resource Planning

Planning done on yearly basis, monthly basis, daily basis to schedule the patients, deploy staff and equipment and to arrange for supplies and spares. Planning for expected patient loads ensured the availability of resources. This ensured that the surgery was not postponed for want of supplies or surgeons. This will of course give the hospital an added cost advantage over other hospitals.

4. Operational Layout

To guide the out-patients a patient information brochure was available and an outpatient co-ordinator was there so as to ease the patients stay in the hospital and ease the procedure awareness for him/her. The operational equipments lay out and the effective and use of planning as to which step should come after which helped them to increase the efficiency and treat more number of patients in a day. Thus the operational efficiencies inculcated in the system will lead to cost advantage.

5. Retention and Recruitment

All training was done internally; therefore the women did not receive a certificate that they could use for finding jobs elsewhere, which increased the retention of paramedics. This can be understood from the fact that average working years of a paramedical staff is five years which is higher in this industry.