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 Mon, May 10, 2010 @ 11:25 AM
Just how far are your marketing efforts, dollars and time going? Do they generate only a blast of traffic and then leave you with no residual revenue stream? Are they really generating future revenue that keeps on coming? Just how often is that the case at your hospital? Marketing is usually pretty traditional in hospitals, billboards, magazines, newspaper ads, brochures etc. Most people who view often are not captivated by it or interacting with it. How do you measure your results? Do the numbers show you it really did work? For how long?
The new model from the nation's capital indicates that financial times are changing dramatically for hospitals. Between healthcare reform and Medicare cuts hospitals are challenged to find new sources of revenue just to stay alive. It is critical to consider healthcare in a completely new way with consumers also struggling to pay basic healthcare costs in a down market.
The biggest healthcare cost is unhealthy behaviors in this country. I think we all have resolved to accept that much. What we are doing to promote prevention and wellness is a staggard and slow response to a huge problem.
Wellness is a factor that people are willing to pay for to get. Shows like "The Biggest Looser" and the huge numbers of baby boomers with youthful glows and healthier lifestyles; have consumers pushing and easily accessing the health and wellness movement. In fact, most of American's are looking online first for just such solutions.
Consumers armed with the plethora of online health information are wanting to get healthy, hoping to avoid large hospital bills and live longer are now focused on the internet for new solutions to wellness care and prevention of illness. More and more American's today are spending more dollars on retail wellness options. There are organizations cashing in on this like Walgreens, and CVS pharmacy and Wal-Mart but really should that not be something the medical experts provide?
When it comes to healthcare there is really only one expert I trust with my health and that is my Doctor! I cannot go to him for every sniffle and every headache he nor I have the time.
Doctor's today can extend the care to their patients by developing well care strategies and resources for getting the patients products they need to get healthy. Doctors and hospitals not retail chain stores should be the ones cashing in on the wellness care market and lowering insurance and medical costs. Not just to add the revenue streams, more importantly to provide responsible preventative care to their patients.
Most hospitals unfortunately do not have the staff or the time to research great health and wellness products, create a convenient online store, manage the plethora of technology to make sure it operates efficiently, the distribution and customer care and to develop marketing strategies for consumers not only to show up at the store but to show up at the hospital's core programs and services. There is a good reason why. Hospitals are in the business of making folks healthy through treatment after the patients are sick. Not to worry, there is an expert and a great solution and both are in the business of prevention and wellness care.
That does not mean to give up. Paquin Healthcare can get your hospital in the prevention and wellness care business too without giving up that new hospital wing to do it. The solution is a turn-key ecommerce and engagement system with professionally screened quality healthcare products to promote wellness and home care. This resource can be at your fingertips and your patient's homes faster than you think!
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 @ 10:23 AM
Imagine the healthcare system as we know it in the United States as a patient visiting a doctor. The doctor has conducted a thorough exam, carefully gauged the patient's vital signs, and is ready to deliver his prognosis:
"You have very little time left."
It's a metaphor, but an entirely apt one. The longstanding healthcare system in the United States is in its death throes, whether the majority of those dependent on it realize it or not. The die has been cast; what's missing is wholesale acknowledgement by both the industry and the public of the new dynamic, and a systemic adaptive response to the changes taking place.
Change is inevitable in any system, and seismic shifts in the American healthcare industry include cuts to Medicare, the high cost of health insurance, the many uninsured and underinsured Americans, and the economic collapse of the traditional reimbursement-based healthcare system. These are the obvious, negative ones, the shifts we're becoming cognizant of as the system becomes progressively more difficult to navigate, both for patients and healthcare providers.
But there are also positive, less obvious changes occurring in healthcare at a cultural level. For starters, Americans have never been better informed about their healthcare options, and in general are more proactive in caring for themselves, eschewing smoking and saturated fats, getting more exercise and supplementing their diet as needed. Healthcare information, once accessible only to medical professionals, has moved into the public domain.
Informed, educated and proactive Americans don't see themselves as patients who only consult a medical expert when they need critical care. They are consumers who are informed about the choices available to them; they make healthcare choices based on their informed opinions, and they increasingly spend money on maintaining their wellness, the ounce of prevention that's worth more than a pound of cure.
Healthcare consumers don't automatically default to their doctors: they research their options, get second opinions and in general address their wellness in a proactive rather than reactive manner. To a healthcare consumer, doctors and hospitals are no longer last resort options; they are resources to maintaining a healthful life.
As a result, the retail end of healthcare, the over-the-counter, cash in hand business of providing wellness has exploded, just as the reimbursement-based system has seemingly run aground.
The medical establishment has been slow to recognize this wholesale transition from patient-to-consumer, but those establishments which recognize that the current system is untenable and recognize their patients as informed, discriminating consumers have transitioned to providing wellness options, in addition to traditional acute care. This transition to wellness-based medicine, from physician-centered care to consumer-centered care, from largely reimbursement-based healthcare to one in which retail healthcare plays a significant role, isn't merely an option for augmenting existing healthcare institutions. It's essential to fiscal survival.
Paquin Healthcare Companies specializes in retail healthcare solutions. Call us to find out more: (407) 566-1010
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.
Posted by Tina O'Oconnell on Wed, Mar 03, 2010 @ 11:22 PM
Marketing is done by first understanding your audience and second by understanding the end result you want to achieve. The creative ways you analyze your resources to maximize results is where you can really make the most bang for your buck. There is everything from cost, time, labor and potential return factor into your decisions. In marketing it is often the traditional avenues that are used based on the resources that are common or comfortable and time to implement is why.
Each of these traditional resources is often repetitive for the marketing team. Consistency is important in marketing so your customers know exactly where to look but, sticking to old ways in a new world can put a stop sign on your returns. It is more important to know that the traditional options for getting the information to the consumers and getting the consumer to act on that information do not work the same way for marketing physical locations versus locations in the e-commerce world.
A good example is Billboard advertising, which for a physical location will mostly likely produce a fair return on the investment, but for a virtual destination such as your ecommerce site it will provide zero return for very logical reasons. A person who drives by a billboard is not going to slam on their breaks to write down a website address, nor are they going to lean over to the laptop in the passenger seat to get onto your ecommerce site. There is no harm in any positive marketing efforts only less or more return for effort. That is the gage.
The marketing path needs to bring the potential customer from the physical location into the online world. The best path is one that leads your online world to your consumer. If the URL is going to be brought to the consumer it needs to travel to the computer with the consumer or meet them there in the virtual world. (e.g. a take away card, brochure or materials with a good spin to compel or capture interest and an email address). The ideal situation is to simply get digital contact information from your consumer so all communications can be online. In usuing this path you bring the URL to your consumer in a much more effective way and you can do it over and over again. An email marketing address is not a "one hit" wonder. Just like traveling on the road there are rules and requirements to keep the tank full and keep going. If you market via email strategically and each time compel and provide incentives for the consumer to comply you can continue the journey with them to your destination.
There are solid tools in e-commerce that consistently work. The tried and true like newsletters & loyalty card programs each should require an email to receive. This is how you capture that digital contact information.
The important thing to do when considering any marketing plan is to think through the process from a consumer's point of view. What happens when I see the ad? What will it do to make sure I can get to the website? What is the incentive to comply? What is the real bottom line message to me? Is the process easy for me? Is the message compelling to a wide enough audience? Take the time to consider the process, the message and carefully drive your consumers exactly where you want them to go. Be sure they will not have roadblocks in getting to your intended destination that you in haste put in place. Make the road clear for your travelers to get to your online destination.