Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
How to help a family decide on cataract surgery
The patient nods and the family decides. Take the son or daughter's number at the counter, send the lens sheet and the whole package price, and ring the same evening.
The GullySales team · Updated 3 Oct 2026 · 7 min read
On this page
Get the decision-maker's number before the patient leaves the building. A seventy-year-old told she has a cataract will nod, thank the doctor and say very little at home. Her son decides, and he was not in the room. With her agreement, take his number at the counter, send him the same sheet the counsellor read out, and ring him that evening. Everything else, the pages and the camps and the reviews, only brings the family as far as your door.
The person who decides was not in the room
Three questions arrive that night, in this order: is it safe, how long will she be in hospital, and what will it cost. The patient cannot answer any of them, because she heard them once, in a consulting room, while worried.
So write the consultation down. One sheet, handed over at the counter, with the surgeon's name, what was found, what was advised, the lens options, the package and a phone number. Photograph it and send it to the family member whose number you took. A sheet that travels home beats an explanation that stayed in the room.
Write the lens choice in three lines, not thirty
Families stall on the lens because they are being asked to spend more money on something nobody has explained. Most of what is said about lenses is written for doctors.
Reduce it to the questions a family can answer. Does she read a lot, or sew? Does anyone drive her at night? Has the surgeon mentioned astigmatism? Would she mind wearing glasses afterwards for some things? Then say which lens the surgeon suggests for her eye, what the next option costs, and what the difference buys. Say plainly when the costlier lens adds nothing for this patient, because the family will find out later and remember who told them.
Price the whole thing, including what people forget
A figure for the surgery alone is not a price. The bill the family remembers includes the tests before, the lens, the medicines, the drops that go on for a while afterwards and the follow-up visit.
| What the family wants to know | Where the answer must be written | The common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| What is in the package | The package sheet, itemised | Quoting the surgery and adding the rest later |
| What the lens options cost | The same sheet, beside the surgeon's suggestion | A verbal range nobody can recall |
| Whether the scheme or insurance covers it | A line on the sheet and a named person at the desk | Sending the son to the insurer's call centre |
| How long she is in the building | The pre-operative instructions | Nobody says, so the family books two days of leave |
| Who to ring if something worries them | The sheet, in large print | A board number that rings at the reception desk |
For a family using a government scheme, insurance or an employer cover, name the person at your desk who handles that paperwork. Say what the family must bring: the card, an identity proof, the referral if the scheme asks for one. A centre that handles the paperwork well is recommended for that alone.
The barrier is a working day, an escort and a way home
Cataract surgery is delayed by logistics as often as by fear. Somebody has to take leave. Somebody has to bring her and take her back, and she cannot travel alone afterwards.
Offer the dates that fit a working family before they ask. Tell them how long the escort must stay. If you can suggest a cab arrangement or a wheelchair at the entrance, say so at booking rather than on the day. For example, a day-care eye surgery unit in Davangere that offers a first slot in the morning, the details being illustrative, finds that families from the surrounding taluks can come and return the same day, which turns two days of lost wages into one.
What your pages and your camps may not say
This is the part owners get wrong because a competitor got away with it. Before-and-after pictures, success rates, claims of being the safest or the most experienced, and patient testimonials all sit in territory that medical council rules restrict. Those rules are not identical everywhere and they change.
Camps and subsidised surgery are long-standing practice, but inducements and offers attached to a medical procedure may be restricted too. Write to your own council or your adviser, ask in writing what your centre may publish, and keep the reply. Until then, the pages describe what the operation involves and who the surgeon is, which is what families are reading for anyway.
What to do next
Count your last fifty consultations where surgery was advised, and mark how many have a family member's number written against them. That percentage is your real conversion problem, and it is fixable at the counter. If you want the gap between advice and a surgery date traced properly, the GullySales free audit is a 90-minute call that follows an enquiry from the first ring to the operating list, and a written, scored report follows it.