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