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Health Disruption to Health Care – by Health Funds and Major Investors
Health funds are beginning to look at disruptive or innovative acquisitions that will help in their objective of converting as many health systems as possible to become part of a managed care consortium. While the process promises lower health costs, low health insurance premiums and a five star system for patients to rate their health…
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Back to Basics – What is your marketing strategy?
I have heard many comments floating around in pharmacy discussions, that community pharmacy has become exceptionally vulnerable since the “Big Yellow Box” has demonstrated that it can outspend all the rest of pharmacy in advertising. In other words, only two camps exist – them and us! To me, that is a lot of nonsense, since…
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Health Out of Pocket Costs Will Impact Pharmacy
The following information was recently released by the AIHW which is showing a trend for government spending to remain a constant while private expenditure is trending upwards. “Total expenditure on health was estimated at $154.6 billion in 2013–14, up by 3.1% on 2012–13 in real terms. Growth in expenditure per person was $6,639, which was…
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Medibank moves to emulate US health insurers – New Funding Models Needed!
Health insurance in the US has always been a contentious issue because of its limitations and high cost. Because of the cost factor it often formed part of a benefit in a salary package with the employer, better able to access to negotiate and manage health insurance discounts. Aggregation through a multiple of employees gave economic…
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The Start-Point for Community Pharmacy Clinical Services – The Walgreen Model
There is no doubt that when an individual undertakes fitness training they measurably do better if they have a fitness coach supervising the process. And it works even better if there is some form of reward attached when goals are reached. Jenny Craig weight loss programs would not have the success they have had without…
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Your Future Pharmacy – there are choices
Pharmacies have always existed in different formats to give customer or patient choices. Physical size has been one of these determinants, but does size really matter? Pharmacy, as an industry has relied on the PBS as being the centre of its universe. In so doing, pharmacists have skewed pharmacy practice to becoming overwhelmingly geared towards…
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Basic Patient Engagement
The term “Patient Engagement” is appearing in pharmacy media at an increasing rate. But what is meant by this term and is there more than one form of patient engagement? The quick answer is that the term is not new, but has been expanded to include patient sharing between various health professions. Patient engagement has…
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Health Insurance-get involved
With all the debate over co-payments for doctor’s visits and PBS prescriptions it is easy to lose sight of the primary issue of a sustainable and affordable health system. While pharmacists begin to sort out the business model that will sustain them over the next decade. the consideration and problems involved as to what level…