“Aravind” Case Preparation Questions: 1. What should be the objectives for Aravind Eye Care System, and what implication do these objectives have for rural market? (As Aravind is the largest provider of eye care services in Tamil Nadu, the gap in the performance of cataract surgery between Tamil Nadu state and the state of Gujarat may be used as an indicator of possible improvement in performance for Aravind) ?The objectives of Aravind Eye Care System are eliminating needless blindness and restore eyesight to the millions of people with poor vision by providing high-quality, high-volume and compassionate eye care to all.
Although Aravind Eye Care System was being expanded to provide total Eye care, the outreach eye camps which have been operating by Aravinds’ reached only 7% of the people in rural villages who had eye problems. As a consequence, objectives for Aravind Eye Care System are to reach out to and cure a much larger percentage of the affected people in the remote area. In the meantime, to solve the firm’s target to serve poor blind people, a low cost facility with 100 beds was added only for those who needed free treatment.
And Aravind had added to its service mix such specialties as treatment of many type of diseases. In the case of incurable blindness, Aravind provided rehabilitation service. Furthermore, in Tamil Nadu, Aravind was one of the biggest providers of eye care services, having conducted 16,747 cataract surgeries in 2009/10, compared with 488,666 cataract surgeries performed in Tamil Nadu. The productivity in terms of number of surgeries was low for other hospitals compared with that of Aravind. The cataract surgical rate per million people in Tamil Nadu was 7,633, compared with the national average of 4,425.
Gujarat had the largest number of eye camps, and cataract surgical rate per million people in Gujarat was 10,015. 2. Examine the reasons for the poor acceptance of eye care services by rural consumers. This answer may require examining rural consumers’ requirements and comparing them with Aravind’s service offering. ?In India, there are only one eye doctor for every 100,000 people, even fewer eye doctors in rural areas. Many people didn’t know that most of the cases of blindness could be cured or corrected. Moreover, many patients were afraid of surgery, which led to the poor response to the effort to remove the backlog of untreated cases of blindness.
Cost was other crucial factor for poor acceptance of eye care service among the rural population. Although, these surgeries were free or were offered at a subsidized price. Patients often didn’t make the trip to the base hospital as they could not afford the costs of transportation, lost wages, food and accommodation. Since these patients were new to the town, they had no guidance on location, place to stay and local transport. The most significant predictors are gender and distance by researchers’ 1 observation.
Men were twice as likely as women to attend the camp, and persons living three kilometers or less from the eye camp were more likely to attend than those living farther away. The service upgraded comprehensive eye care that includes specialty service not available from private practitioners. The patient is offered a wide range of services at different levels from which the patient can make a choice. The referrals from ophthalmologists and physicians also add to the demand.
Quality, transparency of charge and service orientation create trust and increases the patients’ willing to pay for the services. 3. Evaluate the options available to improve consumer acceptance, taking into consideration the poor acceptance identified above. ?When it comes to talk about the reason for the poor acceptance, I think the most significant predictors are lack of awareness, gender and distance. By these reasons, Base Hospitals, Community Centre Clinic, Vision Centre and Mobile Unit are most effective way to improve consumer acceptance. For instance, by Base Hospitals and Community Centre Clinic, the patients can access to the clinic nearby villages where they live.
It solve to problem of distance. Also, Vision centers can create awareness and educate men and women on eye care. Furthermore, by Mobile Unit, patients can save time and avoid the travel to the hospital no matter patients are men or women. 4. Recommend methods to improve the acceptance of eye care services among rural consumers. ?I think the first thing we need to deal with is raising patient’s awareness of importance of eye care. By doing so, the community outreach program can create awareness of the importance and need for eye care.
We need to educate them as much as we can, especially, acceptance of cataract surgery is crucial issue that the Aravind should figure out. Thus, to improve the acceptance of eye care services among rural consumer can be included: House to house visit by patients who had successfully received cataract surgery in terms of health education approaches. Also, we can have an option for economic incentives as follows: Free surgery, free eyeglasses and free transportation to the hospital and so on. In my point of view, to deal with these issues we need to overcome of lack of priority for eye and of poor acceptance of eye treatment and fear of surgery.