The Medical Relaxation Institute understands that keeping expenses under control is an imperative for any business, and MR centers are certainly no exception. Because the MR Eye Pillow™ is a patient management tool used with many, if not all, of a center’s patients and often given to the patient as an amenity and promotional item, it can represent what might appear to be a significant outlay when purchased in quantity. We suggest here some cost/benefit factors that centers might consider when deciding whether to adopt MR Eye Pillows™ for their own operations. These suggestions are based on feedback from MR centers over the past several years.

Cost of patient prep and management. The time allotted for any given scan will depend on a number of factors such as the equipment used, the area of study, and condition of the patient; but in general, the eye pillow can significantly reduce the time required to shepard many patients successfully through the scanning process. This is especially true for patients who are feeling anxious about the procedure or claustrophobic. One center puts it this way: We use the eye pillow routinely so that patients don’t even have the opportunity to ‘freak out.’ If we try to put the eye pillow on when they’re already upset—it sometimes is too late.

Cost of sedation. Many centers report that using eye pillows avoids the need to sedate particularly nervous patients. One center estimates that about 15% of their patients would not be able to get through the exam or would need sedation if they did not use eye pillows.

Cost of failure to complete scans. In some instances, eye pillows have been credited with getting patients successfully through their exams who otherwise would have completely balked.

Cost of re-doing scans. On occasion, even when patients make it through an exam, scans need to be re-done because patient restlessness compromised the quality of the images. Eye pillows, by keeping patients calm and quiet, reduce the incidence of such failures and the costs associated with re-do’s.

Intangible benefits of improved exam experience. Even many patients who make it successfully through an exam without an eye pillow or other stress-reducing strategies find the experience to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant. By using eye pillows, patients generally have a better exam experience and consequently, leave with a more positive feeling about the MR center itself. This can have unquantifiable benefits—improving patient satisfaction and thus the center's word-of-mouth reputation, and, indirectly, subsequent patient referrals—as well as the attitudes and cooperativeness of patients who have to return for multiple exams.

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