Posted by Brian Halstrom on Tue, Jun 29, 2010 @ 03:30 PM
In April 2010, Voluntary Benefits Magazine featured an article by Mr. Tony Paquin of Paquin Healthcare Companies titled after his recent book "The Retail Healthcare Revolution"
The article can be found and read here: http://bit.ly/duDVHx 
The interesting article features the changes in healthcare thinking on the part of the patient and his/her interaction in online health systems and with the hospital.
How a hospital should react in light of this understanding is not defined in the article; however, Paquin Healthcare Companies specializes in just such assistance and can provide assitance at anytime by calling: (407) 566-1010, or going online to www.paquinhealthcare.com.
Posted by Brian Halstrom on Thu, May 20, 2010 @ 11:32 AM
It is critical to measure traffic, sources, successes and returns to make sure your doing a good job as a hospital. I see patient surveys and comment cards as what most hospitals consider the most effective method to do this. These survey's are done on patients "inside" the hospital. The ones that won't ever come back because they were upset are never measured. The patients not there for any other reason when the survey's are done are also not measured. How can this possibly be an accurate measurement of patient satisfaction?
We are in the year 2010 and we have things like email to communicate with patients, yet less than 20% of hospitals today collect email addreses let alone use them. Hospitals today are just now converting the focus a tiny bit from "acute care" to well care or prevention. Caring for patients goes well beyond the traditional visit and involves a retail healthcare strategy well known by chain drug stores and large discount chain stores like Wal-Mart.
This is a "Consumer Engagement Strategy." It requires retail applications for effective results. The hospital can offer supurb treatments and all employees could have wonderful relationships with thier patients and the hospital could still miss the boat on getting new patients or return patients through simple failures in marketing efforts. Success requires this effecient retail stratgy to really net results, repetition and acuratly measured effectiveness of efforts.
Paquin Healthcare who specializes in retail healthcare also use the marketing measures for building the retail traffic to drive traffic back to hospital core programs and services. Each componant functions as ideal for brand recognition, loyalty strategies, core business builders, and extend core customer base. Get the most bank for your efforts by using effecient, effective tools to generate tangible and properly measured results.
For example; hospital retail efforts like a gift shop tune up or an online store with health and wellness products can extend care to a patient long after the visit. Patients not currently inside the hospital building can benefit from these efforts online. If you include healthy monthly newsletters where your hospital can place ads for core programs and services in front of patients each month then you build awareness, extend care and drive traffic back. If you include loyalty card programs and include a point system for participation in diagnostic fairs then your capturing patients, extending additional billable services, building repeat business and your once again extending care to the individual. The capturing of emails in this online retail process allows you to effectively communicate your traditional surveys to the stream of people in your community who are not physicially at your facility and they can answer at thier convenience.
Service my friends goes beyond the visit and the sooner hospital exceutives take hold of this concept and run with it the sooner they will start enjoying the revenue streams that retail healthcare offers for hospitals including the millions currently going to local drug store chains.
Health, prevention and wellness care currently abused by a few in this open retail market need to go back into the trusted hands of the hospitals and healthcare professionals. Hospitals need to focus not just on acute care but on prevention and well care too. That is the only future of good hospital patient care.
Attend a Free webinar by Paquin Healthcare to find out more: http://bit.ly/PaqWebinar or call today: 407-566-1010 and we can help you get on the right road to success.
Posted by Brian Halstrom on Fri, Apr 30, 2010 @ 01:13 PM
Catholic Health Launches Online Health and Wellness Store, CatholicHealthEStore.com, with Paquin Healthcare
Orlando, FL - May 3rd, 2010 -- Paquin Healthcare Companies today announced the launch of Catholic Health's online health and wellness storefront CatholicHealthEStore.com. Catholic Health formed in 1998 serves the Buffalo, NY region. The new online storefront offers a vast product selection as an extension of the healthcare provider's services, a free healthy newsletter, a healthy rewards club, a baby registry and regular promotions for patients & employees.
Paquin Healthcare partners with hospitals, healthcare systems and physician groups nationwide to consult and implement retail healthcare strategies. As part of their services, Paquin Healthcare offers a custom-branded online storefront featuring thousands of health and wellness products. This great new resource for health supplies dramatically improves the extension of care to patients of Catholic Health.
"The ecommerce site presents Catholic Health with the opportunity to send patients directly to a source for recommended healthcare products," says Tony Paquin, Founder and CEO of Paquin Healthcare. "No matter the distance between the patient and their healthcare provider, the online storefront allows them immediate access to the products they are seeking."
The Catholic Health ecommerce storefront is located at: http://www.catholichealthestore.com/
For more information on the ecommerce storefront, please contact Tina O'Connell at Tina.OConnell@paquinhealthcare.comor by calling (407) 566-1010 ext. 215.
About Paquin Healthcare
Paquin Healthcare, the nation's leading specialist in healthcare-based retail, is an alliance of industry leading experts and resources created to assist hospitals in the identification and implementation of healthcare retail and online commerce strategies. The company's core mission is to increase revenue opportunities, engage the consumer, and minimize risks for healthcare organizations. As hospital operational expenses are dramatically changing, new sources for non-reimbursed revenues are becoming essential to the financial viability of hospitals. More details at: http://www.paquinhealthcare.com
Posted by Brian Halstrom on Thu, Apr 22, 2010 @ 08:36 AM
Twenty years ago most physicians would have recoiled at the notion of integrating their existing practice with a retail operation, but the current reimbursement-based system is so thoroughly inefficient that retail has become an industry salvation.
Just as Wal-Mart has brought retail to the healthcare industry, modern hospitals, clinics and medical practices are bringing healthcare into the retail business. Hospitals once relied almost exclusively on immediate need for their patient base, but that's no longer true: those patients relying on hospitals almost exclusively for acute care have become consumers, hungry for information, services and products, and hospitals that decline to provide what consumers want will invariably lose business to more accommodating wellness purveyors.
It's a free market economy, an economic wild west, and only the fit, the institutions that adapt to the economic realities, will survive.
Retail success is built around providing people with attractive options; discounted generic prescriptions at Wal-Mart will test the conventional pharmacy model, but hospitals with branded vitamins and healthcare products will similarly test the conventional retailers. Unlike the conventional healthcare system, retail-based, wellness-oriented healthcare is economically sound, and growing at an astonishing pace.
More choices for the consumer mean healthier, happier customers, and healthcare providers who can economically prosper rather than barely stay afloat fulfill their mission of serving both individuals and the community as a whole. The definition of a good business arrangement is one in which all parties benefit. This is the goal of Healthcare Retail: to provide more productive business practices for all healthcare providers and to create more and better healthcare options for consumers.
This revolution in the healthcare isn't some futuristic projection: it's happening now in healthcare facilities all across the United States.
Posted by Tina O'Oconnell on Wed, Apr 21, 2010 @ 10:18 AM
Orlando, FL - April 16, 2010 -- Paquin Healthcare Companies today announced the launch of Associated Healthcare Management's online health and wellness storefront MyFamilyMD. Associated Healthcare Management serves Seminole County and Northwest Orange County in central Florida through six primary care medical offices. The storefront offers a vast product selection as an extension of the healthcare provider's services.
Paquin Healthcare partners with hospitals, healthcare systems and physician groups nationwide to consult and implement retail healthcare strategies. As part of their services, Paquin Healthcare offers a custom-branded online storefront featuring thousands of health and wellness products.
"The ecommerce site presents Associated Healthcare Management with the opportunity to send patients directly to a source for recommended healthcare products," says Tony Paquin, Founder and CEO of Paquin Healthcare. "No matter the distance between the patient and their healthcare provider, the online storefront allows them immediate access to the products they are seeking."
The Associated Healthcare Management ecommerce storefront is located at: http://www.FamilyMdSource.com.
For more information on the ecommerce storefront, please contact Ben Paquin at ben.paquin@paquinhealthcare.com or by calling (407) 566-1010 ext. 214.
About Paquin Healthcare
Paquin Healthcare, the nation's leading specialist in healthcare-based retail, is an alliance of industry leading experts and resources created to assist hospitals in the identification and implementation of healthcare retail and online commerce strategies. The company's core mission is to increase revenue opportunities and minimize risks for healthcare organizations. As Medicare reimbursement rates continue to be pressured downward and expenses rise, new sources for non-reimbursed revenues are becoming essential to the financial viability of hospitals. More details at: http://www.paquinhealthcare.com
Posted by Tina O'Oconnell on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 @ 08:16 AM
That new hospital fitness center aerobics class is starting in two weeks and you want the word out. Your hospital's marketing team has been working on just how to do it.
The big question is "How to make sure that the invitations don't make there way to the ninety year old recent heart attack patient asking him to join the latest aerobic kick boxing session."
As absurd as that sounds it happens every single day in marketing. The message, money and effort is wasted on that person who really is not the appropriate audience for the message. Worse, the result of that ninety year old person getting that kind of message makes him associate your brand name with junk mail. So when that message about the new cardiology program at your hospital designed to improve his heart health comes to him, he is expecting another aerobics class invite and drops it in the bin. Your marketing window of opportunity is shut! You really only do get one shot to do it right.
How about the message? The what you see is what they get is not actually how the message is always viewed. Three people can read the same sentence and gain a completely different understanding than the two other persons standing right next to them. You have to make the message so articulate and so clear that it can not be mis-interpreted by any reader to the best of your ability. I know this sounds like you need superman to join your marketing team; but, it is really not that hard. Simply taking the time to read and thinking through the message as if you were the on the receiving end and putting your self in the shoes of various types, ages and lifestyles of people to gage how they will view it will help you make sure it gets through to them as you intended it to in all scenarios to all readers.
The word of the day is target marketing and it is critical to your online and in house retail marketing success. Whether the effort is for your hospitals core programs and services or for your new online store; the message if going to everyone should be very general, if it is not, than it should be targeted in nature and sent only to those appropriate for that message. The message always must be simple and clear.
The right readership can be tricky. It takes research, and a good understanding of who your customer base is that your communicating with for that message.
At Paquin Healthcare we have technology built into our system that lets us learn who our visitors and our clients visitors are and really understand their health interests, health conditions, buying habits, activity level and interest, what thier family's health conditions are; and so much more, beyond the standard demographical data. This mass of information is then structured and "scored" to allow us to use the data gathered to appropriately communicate the message we are sending to the readers who have those specific interests at heart.
The more important result of all this technology is that we are making sure our message is always read, never junked and getting the financial results we and our clients want. Our virtual "aerobics classes" and our virtual "cardio testing programs" are able to host a full house because the right message is getting to the right people. Can you say the same? If not, talk to us about how we can do this for your hospital or retail business.
Posted by Gloria Caulfield on Mon, Mar 08, 2010 @ 07:28 AM
One of the most common questions, that we receive at
Paquin Healthcare is, "How do I make my gift shop more profitable?"
There are a couple of key areas of opportunity. One of the biggest problems is that a single gift shop usually doesn't have the buying power or the staff with the negotiation skills to get merchandise at the appropriate discounts. In fact, even within the same healthcare system, we often see that buying is not coordinated from one gift shop to another. This is a missed opportunity.
Our mission for clients is to deliver a gift shop buy plan that has an exciting merchandise selection, but also has high margin items. Our target mark-up on products ranges anywhere from 250%-300%, which is more in line with best practices in the retail industry. At the same time, it is always the goal to deliver value to internal customers. Internal customers should always feel that the price they receive is fair and comparable to the quality of the product they are purchasing.
Second, but equally as important, is buying products that your customers want to buy. We often survey employees at hospital sites; it is amazing how large the disconnect can be. Employees, for example, want to patronize the gift shop on a regular basis. Often, however, the products they are willing to purchase are not available.
Following current trends, keeping the merchandise fresh and turning it often is certainly one of the keys to a successful retail strategy.