In order to allow prospective patients to make informed decision and prevent them from making a wrong decision which they may later regret, we have adopted a compulsory 6-month “cooling-off period” during which prospective patients who have cast doubts about our surgeon’s or our clinic’s credibility are urged to do further research and/or seek second, third, fourth, fifth or even sixth opinion, or as many opinions as they wish to get, before making the decision on which surgeon they trust to perform surgeries for them. During this 6-month “cooling-off period” patients who have cast initial doubts on our surgeon and/or clinic will not be allowed to book any surgery slot with us. This is to protect the patient’s interest so as not to allow anyone to rush or pressurize him/her into making a decision to visit us for surgery. If he/she wishes to visit someone else, he/she is welcome to do so. If the result is not desirable, he/she may visit us later on, for revision surgeries. Just like restaurants, sometimes one may have to try a few restaurants before he/she could make a decision on which restaurant serves the most palatable dishes.
Below is an email a prospective patient recently sent us, and how we would reply her. We did not actually reply her email, because it is Dr Arthur Tjandra‘s policy that none of his staff is allowed to convince a prospective patient into getting a surgery done. A prospective patient has to do his/her own research and convince him/herself with the information and evidence we have provided on various venues and channels. None of his staff is allowed to recommend or suggest any form of treatments or surgeries to a patient or persuade a prospective patient to get a surgery done, unless a patient asks specific questions regarding a procedure or surgery.
The email goes………..
Hi Jennifer,
I’ve been doing some additional readings over the past few days on Dr Arthur and have a few questions before I proceed:
- I have noticed some dubious reviews/advertorials being passed off as genuine ones on forums but they mostly follow the same sentence structure. Why this approach as it doesn’t lend any credibility to Dr Arthur’s skills?
- I’ve also read some really negative comments about how Dr Arthur is overly profit-driven at the expense of the success of their procedure. I’ve read a few reviews alleging that Dr Arthur deliberately leaving fats on one side and making it uneven so they have to re-visit him for multiple procedures, despite them telling him that it’s clearly uneven while he is operating them. I want mine done right the first time and not ensure multiple revisit on the same issues as there might be scar tissues formed by then.
Regards,
XYZ
Our reply to her would be:
Dear XYZ
To address your queries:
- Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie has published approximately 5000 before and after surgery photographs on his website: Elixir de Vie between 2008 and 2011. He has also published approximately 3000 before and after surgery videos from 2014 to 2016, mostly liposuction and fat grafting, on his YouTube channel. As YouTube removed many of his videos, he launched his own Video Blog (Vlog) in December 2016. Currently, there are “only” 2170 videos left on our YouTube channel. There are more than 1500 videos which have been published on our Vlog between December 2016 and November 2017.
Therefore, to answer your query, we do not need to advertise our services, nor do we need to engage any advertorial services. We shun forums because those are not professional and legal platforms to educate patients. Forums are platforms for the blinds guiding the blinds. We believe that if a prospective patient has a query, that query should be addressed directly to a medical professional instead of looking for an answer in forums.
In the past, we have had rejected many “bloggers” and “influencers” who requested for free surgeries in return for review on their blogs. We do not like this idea at all because a blogger or influencer is obliged to write a good review after getting free surgeries. After all, there is no “free lunch”! Which surgeon is going to perform free surgery for you in return of mediocre or even bad review? We have adopted a different system where we encourage our paying patients to write a review or blog about their experience if they are happy with their surgeries. They do get some benefits when they return for their surgeries, in the form of old rates (as we increase our surgery fees every 3 to 6 months). But, they are not obliged to do so. After all, who will return for a second surgery with the same surgeon, if the result of the first surgery is not good? Even if we offered you the same rate, would you return for the same surgery if the result of the first surgery was not good? We have published a list of known blogs on our website: Elixir de Vie blogs. Some patients may not have informed us of their blogs. If you do come across blogs which are not listed, please inform us so that we can include them on the list.
2. For safety reason, Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie would only remove approximately 2L of fat in any one session of liposuction surgery. If one has 6L of fat in her thighs, naturally she needs to undergo 3 sessions of liposuction to get all the fat out! It is for that reason we usually screen out and turn down all overweight and obese patients. Liposuction is not for weight loss. It is a body-sculpting method to remove stubborn fat in patients who are already within their ideal range of weight! In the past, we used to depend only on BMI to screen out prospective patients, and we used a cut-off point of 28. Because of that, fat patients like the one you mentioned above, managed to pass through our screening and book a surgery slot! After a few encounters with such unrealistic fat patients, we have tightened our screening criteria by decreasing the cut-off BMI to 25 and require all prospective patients to send photographs or being physically-assessed by Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie before they could book a surgery slot. It is because even an underweight patient could have liters and liters of fat to be removed, especially from their thighs!
One very good example is Patient No. 462. She weighs only 48 kg. With a height of 165 cm, her ideal “healthy” body weight by conventional standard should be around 59 kg! She is more than 10 kg underweight, but Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie managed to remove 2L of fat from her thighs! Can you believe that a patient who is underweight by more than 10 kgs could have 2 liters of fat removed from her thighs? She ends up as one of Dr Arthur Tjandra‘s masterpieces! It is this type of patients (the “underweight” by normal criteria) who may benefit the most from liposuction surgery and become a masterpiece, because all the fat may be removed in just one session to achieve good result. Most patients with “ideal” weight by normal criteria may have liters and liters of fat in their “ideal” bodies, way too much to remove in 1 session of liposuction, hence making them not-so-ideal candidate for liposuction, unless they are realistic with their expectation, and are prepared to undergo multiple sessions of liposuction to take all their fat out! Accepting unrealistic patients will result in a lot of unhappiness and smear campaign on the internet, as we have learned the hard way.
Ultimately, it is a patient’s duty to do research and due diligence to find the most suitable surgeon whom he/she can trust. It is not our duty to try to convince a patient that Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie is the right surgeon for him/her. We are not sales person, who push our products or services around. That is what differentiate a medical professional from a marketing/sales personnel. In fact, in our clinic, we adopt a strict policy that we do not follow-up on “leads“. Many clinics task their staff to follow-up on “leads”. They have a policy that all “leads” can and should be turned into potential “sales”. We do not do that. We will answer your queries and provide the information you request for. After that, we will leave you alone to digest the information. If you never call or email us again, we will never call or email you to try to turn that “lead” into “sales”. As we have pointed out above, it takes time to digest all the information we provide on our website, emails and videos. We currently have close to 5000 videos posted on our YouTube channel and Vlog. Based on our interview with our patients, most spent average 3 years watching our videos before deciding to visit us. There are a lot of videos to watch, and we advise you to spend at least 3-4 years watching all the videos before coming to us. Therefore, even the 6-month compulsory “cooling down” period may be too short a time to really digest all the information and watch all the 5000 videos we have published thus far, especially when you already have doubts. Our advice to all patients who have doubts is: DO NOT go to a surgeon for a surgery if you have even the slightest doubts on his credibility. ONLY go to a surgeon whom you trust 100%! By the way, Patient No. 462 spent 8 years following us before she finally came to us for her surgery!
Last but not least, we are always asked this question: “Can you guarantee that the result of my surgery will be good?” The answer is “No”. We do not guarantee results. We can only guarantee that Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie will do his best. That is why we have a “one patient per day” policy in our clinic. This way, you will get undivided attention from Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie. You have to decide yourself whether Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie is the right surgeon to perform the surgery you want, by going through the thousands of case studies and videos we have published. This come with a disclaimer, though: “Individual result may vary”. Therefore, no, we do not promise and guarantee results. Many surgeons do. We do not! We do not need to make (empty) promises to push sales. We have 5000 videos to show you the result of Dr Arthur Tjandra‘s surgeries. You just have to make some effort to watch the videos and decide whether he is the right surgeon for you!
Regards,
Jennifer Cotto
We have to remind all prospective patients to do their own research well and be 100% sure that they want Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie to perform surgeries for them. If you still have even 0.0001% doubt, please do not come to Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie. The moment he senses that you still have doubt, he would cancel your surgery and ask you to go home to reconsider your decision. This has happened in the past. One Singaporean patient asked him, “Are you confident you can get good result?” Another patient from Hong Kong asked him “How experienced are you? How many cases have you performed so far?” Both had their liposuction surgeries cancelled and requested to return to their respective countries to reconsider their decision. Both re-booked their surgeries 6 months later, presumably after doing a more extensive research on Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie. So far, we have published 5000 before and after surgery photo slides on our website, 3000 videos on our YouTube channel, almost 1000 of which have been removed by YouTube, and close to 2000 videos on this video-blog (Vlog). If you have watched all the videos, those questions are redundant.