Eye clinics in India use tiered pricing to provide affordable service to poorest patients

"An expanding network of eye clinics has found an innovative way of providing quality, affordable treatment to millions of blind and visually impaired poor people in India," the Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog reports. The LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), a not-for-profit organization that runs a chain of 82 eye care centers and a research institute in India, uses tiered pricing to charge wealthier patients for treatment, allowing the group to provide free treatment to poorer patients.

LVPEI "serves at least one million people every year through 14 hospitals and around 80 screening centers -- a network that is still expanding," and "[m]ore than half of the patients receive free treatment," the blog writes. "Although LVPEI uses grants and donors to fund its research -- it is credited with performing nearly 800 stem-cell transplants for treating corneal blindness -- or as capital expenditure, its operating costs are covered by the fees from patients, which account for more than three-quarters of its annual income," it adds (Alluri, 2/7).