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Center of Central Maine in Waterville, operates in a comparatively sparsely
populated area and does advanced procedures on 2 Mondays a month.
"The surrounding towns have a population of maybe 30 or 40,000 people,"
says Dr. Kohler. "I didn't feel comfortable going out on a limb and buying the
equipment, not knowing what the volume was going to be."
Sightpath asserts that to break even after buying a femtosecond laser, you
need to perform 23 cases a month. By contrast, it says, you can generate a
profit with 10 cases a month using its service.
"The volume has actually been greater than I expected," says Dr. Kohler.
"I'm probably in the gray zone of 20 or 25 cases a month, which might just
about justify the purchase of a laser, but I still like the convenience of having
a trained engineer come in with his or her experience to run it. I don't have
to store the machine or worry about maintenance. There's no insurance. I
have access to their marketing tools. There are a lot of not-so-obvious layers
to the arrangement that make it very desirable for me."
Dr. Kohler's association with the company goes back to 1998 — "even
before it was called Sightpath," he says — and he says the arrangement
has been "incredibly seamless," even though Maine winters can challenge
the hardiest travelers.
"Out of 15 years, the weather has been an issue maybe a couple of
times," he says. "The important point is that the Sightpath model enabled
me to gain access to this expensive technology and offer it to my patients
in rural Maine. I can offer my patients cutting-edge technology right here
— Jim Burger
in small-town America."
tion, video education, web education and social media."
'You're the doctor'
Of course there's always the possibility that a given patient will be
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, says Karl G.
