Hair Transplant Doctors That Charge By the Session vs By the Graft

Can you please translate this.

I always thought that most hair loss surgeons charged by the graft. However, I noticed the following on a certain surgeon’s website. The surgeon is very well known and highly respected, so I don’t believe he is playing a pricing game, but I have no idea of what is meant by “charging by the session and NOT by the graft.”

Also, how could charging by the graft be misleading, like the wording claims? Please explain what he is trying to say and clarify how you charge.

From a certain surgeon’s website: “At (name removed), we try to keep hair surgery affordable. We charge by the session, not by the graft or hair, which can be misleading and overly expensive.“

Most hair transplant clinics do charge by the graft. I think the surgeon who made the above statement clearly believes session charges are less misleading and have a greater value than graft charges. At one time, I entertained the idea of doing a session charge rather than a per graft charge, but I ran into a problem working through the details of the charging mechanism. For example, if a person had a session charge for 400-800 grafts and then another charge for 801-1200 grafts, would the person who paid for 801 grafts feel cheated when he knew that someone else paid a lesser price for 799 grafts? I think that a patient would want to know just what they are getting and per graft charges really reflect, in my opinion, the amount of work done and the value in transplanted hair to the outcome. Iin this example, there is almost no difference between a charge by the graft for 799 vs 801 grafts, compared with a big step up in pricing for a session charge.

Charging by the graft is like a lawyer charging by the hour. If the lawyer is honest in his hourly billing, the client actually pays for what he gets; likewise, if the surgeon actually delivers the grafts that he says he transplanted, the same question of honesty is raised by the patient who should ask, “How do I know what I purchased in number of grafts were actually delivered?”. Here’s a few posts about ethics in graft counting that may interest you:

• Areas of Unethical Behavior Practiced Today
• Avoid the Scam – Unethical Graft Counting!
• Unethical Graft Counting, Follow-Up
• How Do I Know I’m Getting the Amount of Grafts I Paid For?