Below is a short excerpt from Paquin Healthcare’s CEO Tony Paquin:

One of the reasons Americans have become consumers is that those who Pay and who Provide healthcare have changed, and patients have been forced to adapt. Even if you chose to be only a patient, the modern healthcare industry has virtually eliminated that option.

In prior generations, people needing healthcare were strictly seen as Patients. Doctors prescribed medication, hospitals provided care, and insurance companies paid the bills. Today, however, with the shift towards HSA, co-pays, uninsured and under insureds, people are also Payors, constantly paying for their own healthcare when the Payor term once referred only to insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. Every time you submit a co-pay you’re a Payor, and with each passing year consumers are slowly becoming responsible for more of the traditional Payor’s responsibility.

The same concept applies to Providers. Previously, people always went to a healthcare provider to be treated: a doctor, nurse, hospital, clinic, therapist, etc. Providers were the medical establishment, and they were insular. Today people use other means, including the Internet, books, training and consultations with physicians to manager their own care and make their own informed decisions. Medicine is no longer an insular community; the knowledge is available to anyone with the interest in finding it. By seeking their own solutions and following their own counsel, consumers are often their own healthcare Provider.

So while healthcare was once defined as having three distinct stakeholders, the Patient, the Payor, and the Provider, the modern consumer is often all three.

The positive aspect of this shift is that consumers have come to recognize that with this additional responsibility comes greater freedom to make decisions in their own best interest. If they have a responsibility to pay for health and wellness products to supplement traditional physician-prescribed medicine, then they have the freedom to choose products that serve their needs. Being a Payor means more than paying into your health plan and co-pays on medical visits and prescriptions; it also means making decisions about where your money goes as a consumer of health and wellness products you choose for yourself.

Becoming a Payor also has implications beyond choices that benefit the individual purchaser, as individuals realize that their retail choices can have a broader social impact. In recent years there has arisen a consumer who makes choices based on social responsibility and personal benefit. Products such as Newman’s Own, which donates 100% of its proceeds to charity, or Starbucks Ethos Water, which donates a percentage towards the goal of providing potable water in impoverished areas, draw consumers with the quality of their product and the socially responsible way proceeds are used.

The socially conscious consumer adds a third party to the purchasing equation: I get a product I want or need and the company makes a profit, and a third party, usually a charitable organization, also benefits.
Retailers have benefited from the increasing purchasing power of socially conscious consumers. Healthcare institutions are in a position to realize the same benefit from socially conscious consumers. Many communities are already united around their area hospital, organizing foundations and fundraisers to support an institution they recognize as indispensable to the well-being of the larger population. When consumers recognize that their purchasing power can support their local hospital, socially conscious economics has an effect right in their back yard.

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First, the medical institution must recognize that it has consumers with free choice, and must provide for them an alternative to the competing retailers’ products. Patients may not have a choice where the ambulance takes them after an accident, but they can choose where they purchase their health and wellness products: from any number of area retailers, or from the hospital where their physicians practice, where they go in an emergency, where their children were probably born. And by choosing their hospital they enrich the community in which they live.

Economists call such socially conscious sales Mission Based Retail. Again, such sales fit the definition of a perfect business arrangement: everyone wins. The consumer has his product, the medical institution has its profit, and both are helping realize the hospital’s mission, which is serving the community.

About the Author

Tony Paquin has extraordinary vision in developing retail business opportunities within healthcare systems. He has over 20 years experience leading strategic companies in the insurance and healthcare Industries.

He previously founded and managed one of the largest technology companies in the insurance sector and was CEO of a NASDAQ listed healthcare services company.

Tony is founder and CEO of Paquin Healthcare Companies, currently employing a staff of 30. Paquin Healthcare Companies develops and implements innovative retail strategies at over 200 hospitals nationwide.

Tony believes that hospitals need the high margin, cash and carry revenue delivered via onsite retail operations. Also, patients need a reliable and authoritative source for high quality healthcare products to augment the services they receive from their healthcare providers.

Further, Tony feels that hospitals must create a competitive advantage to secure their position in the healthcare marketplace, and prevent non-healthcare organizations from infringing on their consumer base.

Tony has extensive experience in public policy at both the state and national level. He has participated in strategic sessions at the Naval War College and has run as a candidate for the United States House of Representatives. Tony was co-founder of both the Arizona Software Association and Idaho Technology Association.

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