31 Oct One in a Million: SurgiLance Safety Lancet Quality
Among other fiscal-year-end tasks I perform, one is to prepare an annual quality report for our SurgiLance™ safety lancets. I would like to share the results of just one parameter we track regarding the quality of our medical devices: our complaint rate.
Last year, our complaint rate was a miniscule 0.00002 percent. To save you the trouble of counting those zeroes after the decimal, that is two one-hundred thousandths. Impressive, but wait, it gets even more impressive when you consider that the figure is based upon only 16 complaints for the more than 85 million safety lancets that we sold in FY 2012!
Last year’s rate was anything but an anomaly. Since FY 2003, the SurgiLance complaint rate has averaged 0.00002 percent — a scant 212 complaints for the nearly one billion lancets sold between then and the last fiscal year!
We are very proud of such a quality record. But to put it in perspective and demonstrate the accomplishment, let’s compare the chances against some real world events. The chances of having a negative experience with a SurgiLance safety lancet are considerably lower than:
- Writing a New York Times bestseller: One in 220.
- Bowling a perfect 300 game: One in 11,500.
- Winning an Academy Award: Also one in 11,500.
- Hitting a hole-in-one in golf: For a pro, the chances are 1 in 2,500; for the average amateur, it’s 1 in 12,500.
As improbable as those events might be, they are still far more likely than having a problem with a SurgiLance safety lancet. Let’s continue! Your chances of having a problem with SurgiLance are also lower than:
- Being struck by lightning: In the United States, the chances are 1 in 280,000.
- Being struck by an asteroid in the next 100 years: One in 500,000.
- Holding a royal flush in poker after the first deal: One in 649,740.
Believe it or not, we’re still not even close! Let’s step it up a bit and really start getting closer to things that are still more likely to happen than a SurgiLance problem (some of which are unfortunately a bit more morbid):
- Winning an Olympic medal: One in 662,000 (Michael Phelps excluded).
- Correctly picking four numbers and the bonus ball in the Mega Millions lottery: One in 689,065.
- Being bitten by a dog: 1 in 700,000.
- Death from a fireworks accident: One in 1,000,000.
- Falling on a fusilli pasta statue of Jerry Seinfeld: At least according to Seinfeld co-star Frank Costanza, one in 1,000,000.
- Death from drowning in the next year: One in 1,428,377.
And once again, we’re still not close. I’ll cut the suspense and will finally tell you: Based on our rate of complaints last year, the probability of having a problem with a SurgiLance Safety Lancet was only one in 5.3 million!
With such great odds, we are confident that you’ll have a satisfactory experience with SurgiLance safety lancets. Why not request no-cost samples today and let us know what you think?