Sell health products for your financial health
Selling retail products creates two welcome additions to your center: It’s a value-added feature for patients and a new profit center for your budget. The secret to success is choosing products your staff believe in and your patients can use.
The two-year-old retail program at the Spence Center for Women’s Health in Cambridge, MA, offers such items as high-end vitamins, herbs, skin care products, and books. The retail center, located close to the facility’s entrance, is staffed from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
"You have to coordinate the products with the doctors, otherwise you have chaos," warns Amy Fleischer, director of marketing. If the physicians support the retail products, they encourage patients to buy them when they are appropriate adjuncts to treatment, Fleischer explains. For example, the dermatologists might tell acne patients about the center’s line of skin cleansers.
It took the staff about two months to reach consensus on which products to offer. Of all the products, books are the best sellers.
"They help us build health care partnership with our patients instead of the old paternal relationship," says Kathy Foell, MS, RD, regional retail manager and nutritionist. For example, Foell says, providers encourage patients to read about menopause and participate in their decisions about hormone replacement therapy.
Patient waiting rooms have mini-libraries of titles available in the retail center. Patients not only read them while they wait for their appointments, but the sign tells them they can purchase copies for themselves as they leave the building.
"Patients tell us they prefer them to old magazines," Fleischer says.
Rina Spence, founder of the three Spence Centers for Women’s Health, all in the Boston area, estimates that the initial investment per site in product display units is roughly $4,000. Inventory is worth $8,000. It takes about a year to turn a profit, and at the Cambridge site, that profit is about $1,000 a month.
Even if your retail center is only a 4-foot-square nook, give it visual appeal, Fleischer suggests. Bring in a retail marketing specialist, she advises, adding, "It’s important to know how to capture the shopper’s attention."
Details count, such as organizing books for easy browsing and positioning the cash register close to the exit. Product selection is crucial. Your space will be limited, Foell adds, "so don’t crowd it with products your patients can find at every other store on the street." ß
"Calming the hell in your head" in the June issue of Glamour gives the latest on treatments and prevention of migraines. Because migraine suffers are three times as likely to be women than men, evidence suggests that hormones are the main culprit. Decreased levels of estrogen, just before menstruation, seem to be the biggest trigger and probably explain why more than a third of migraineurs experience their first migraine at puberty. This also explains why 70% become migraine-free after menopause.
Richard Lipton, MD, co-director of the headache unit at New York City’s Montefiore Medical Center, says that although women don’t need to wait until menopause to find relief, they do need to experiment with different drug treatments and, most of all, have patience. Because there are different types of migraines with varying degrees of pain, one drug won’t work for everyone.
Also, not everyone needs to be treated with medication; home remedies often can help migraine sufferers relax while speeding pain relief. Changes in the diet, such as increasing vitamins and minerals and decreasing fat and other trigger foods, often can help alleviate the pain and frequency of migraines. Other home remedies, including hot showers, ice packs, and relaxation techniques, particularly biofeedback, are helpful when treating menstrual migraines.
In the May issue of Vogue, women are warned of the harmful and sometimes deadly side effects of the new diet drugs, Redux and fen/phen. These diet pills have side effects including dry mouth, fatigue, and diarrhea and are known to cause brain damage in laboratory animals. They’re connected with primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH), which kills the majority of the people who are diagnosed with that disease. Although these diet pills should be recommended only for people who are dangerously obese (at least 100 pounds overweight), these drugs are readily available, and doctors around the country are alarmed that an epidemic of PPH will occur.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Redux last year, even with the knowledge that it could cause PPH, by justifying its ability to prevent 20 obesity-related deaths for every one PPH-related death, according to an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine written by JoAnn E. Manson, MD. However, this estimate assumes that Redux works perfectly for everyone who takes it, when actually, one out of every five patients don’t receive the expected results, according to the Redux package insert. Pondimin, the brand name for fenfluramine, is also known to increase the risk of PPH, and the combination of that with phentermine (fen/phen) is not approved by the manufacturer, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories in Philadelphia.
Although there isn’t a perfect diet pill on the market today, experts predict that diet drugs will become safer and more effective in the years to come. Obesity researchers are making significant progress in understanding what causes people to overeat and have pinpointed about six genes and numerous proteins that cause us to gain weight. However, these new diet pills, based on genes, are not expected on the market for at least five years.
Women are learning how to love the changes that come with menopause, according to the June issue of Good Housekeeping. Within the next two years, more than 40 million baby boomers are expected to go through menopause and, in the process, are learning from experts and from their peers. Women are demonstrating a desire to learn more about this natural occurrence, and this desire has generated many best-selling books, specialized clinics, and even support groups.
The article gives a candid narrative of four women who have gone through menopause and how they have learned to love the changes and freedom it has allowed them. The comfort of having a loving husband, being able to speak openly, and having a support group of friends allowed these women the ability to adapt to the life-changing events taking place. This article gives hope and inspiration to every woman going through menopause, because it puts the age-old myths to rest while proving that menopause is not the end; it’s a new beginning.
An editorial in the June issue of Glamour raises some questions about birth control methods being offered to women in the United States. The intrauterine device (IUD) offers protection against pregnancy that is comparable to tubal sterilization; however, many women don’t know much about this contraceptive device. This lack of knowledge may be due to the fact that, according to a survey by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in Washington, DC, almost half of its members don’t volunteer any information regarding IUDs.
Although in the past there were problems resulting from IUDs, today’s guidelines are much stricter and require thorough testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. IUDs are not for everyone, cautions Ralph W. Hale, MD, executive director of ACOG. Women who have monogamous relationships and have had children are good candidates for the IUD. However, if a woman wants to consider an IUD, it is probably up to her to bring up the idea with her doctor. ß
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