Thomas W. Samuelson, M.D. Review & Pricing

Positive Experience Weight: 85%

In a study finished in 2011, 95% of patients were satisfied their LASIK eye surgery. We want to reflect this in our scoring.

New technology like Contoura / Wavefront, ICL, and other types of vision correction surgery may result in even higher positive outcome rates. Given this and the large number of online reviews of LASIK available, we feel star ratings and comments from consumer review sites like Google Maps are the best representation of LASIK quality when surgery is successful. For centers which only perform LASIK and related surgeries, we use every rating in the score. For locations which perform more types of ophthalmic surgery and other types of vision appointments, we consider both their overall rating (50%) and the rating for patients who mention LASIK, PRK, or a related surgery in their review (50%).

Incident Management Weight: 15%

Although only a small fraction of patients have negative outcomes from LASIK, the disproportionate effects from a failed surgery mean we give them a disproportionately higher weight.

Our goal is to convey how well (or poorly) your case would be handled if your surgery failed. To that end, our Incident ratings are calculated from 3 equally weighed elements:

1. Incident acknowledgement: Whether the provider acknowledges incidents
2. Second surgery offer: Whether the provider tries to fix failed surgeries for patients at no cost to the patient
3. 3rd party offer: Whether the provider refers patients to a 3rd party for a surgical or other fix at no cost to the patient

Why do we use these criteria?

1. Incident acknowledgement: To receive remediative care patients must know such care is available. If a provider acknowledges an incident early, that can help patients
2. Second surgery offer: We have reviewed hundreds of LASIK reviews, and in many cases providers offer to fix failed surgeries with a subsequent surgery. Because many providers offer this service, we assume it is effective and we include it in our Incident Management review. If the provider refers all patients to a 3rd party at no cost to the patient then they get a perfect score
3. 3rd party offer: In reviewing dozens of patient incident stories, we found many patients refused to allow their original surgeon to operate on them again for fear of a second failure. For these patients, we know they often seek a 3rd party service to help them, and in TreatCost's opinion the original provider should pay for that service

These criteria are not comprehensive. TreatScore includes multiple data sources, but we do not always include every piece of information in our score. TreatScore is intended to be a starting point to help patients understand the experiences of other patients, so all calculations are based on patient reviews and patient incident reports. If you are a provider and want to improve your score, we recommend asking patients who experience an incident to post their experience online and then send TreatCost.com a link to this content via our Feedback Form.