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 @ 10:23 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 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.
Posted by Tina O'Oconnell on Wed, Feb 03, 2010 @ 08:14 AM
How to compete in online healthcare ecommerce without breaking the bank? Little tools can lead to major success. The most important of which is: Email marketing.
This does not mean slapping together any tidbit and pushing it out to your list of clients. What makes email marketing effective? It's simple: permission and relevant content. This means that the recipient is expecting to receiving messages and considers the content of the emails to be beneficial.
This does not mean you can not have a little fun with it. When and online gaming membership site launched a simple Elf bowling Christmas game link they generated over two million hits resulting in huge paid membership spikes that lasted over six years and each year at holiday time this Christmas gift finds its way to many new email addresses all by itself.
It is not practical to reach out with a funny toy and expect the world to spin it into your bankroll every week so become an expert in your field and target your market to provide a service with your email. How do you know what works? Just log, watch & review your web page stats to know what topics generate more hits.
Despite critics who question email marketing's effectiveness, email marketing continually delivers the highest ROI for any marketing method. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing delivered $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009.
For online retail healthcare business owners, this translates into a pre-qualified list of prospects and returning customers. To keep each loyal you only need to continue providing emails with content that is compelling and useful