By Megan Moyer, senior marketing communications specialist, for the Home Health Care Opportunity blog series
This is the final post in the “Home Health Care Opportunity” blog series. This post will cover how to promote your HHC department and how to start implementing it in your store.
Your prescription department likely generates the majority of your business. Patients know what to expect from the prescription department, and they know how and what kind of help they can ask for. Patients also know what to expect from the front-end of the pharmacy, whether it’s over-the-counter health and wellness products, gifts, greeting cards, or snacks and beverages. But patients do not necessarily know what “home health care” is or how it can benefit them.
Think of your HHC business as a brand-new business “unit” of your pharmacy’s operation, just as if you were introducing an extensive new gift section. Even if you have carried HHC products for a number of years, you may have opportunity to call renewed attention to your offerings, especially now that more consumers are becoming aware of – and actively seeking – options to help them live more comfortably as they age.
The following ideas can serve as a springboard to create a promotional plan for your HHC department that educates and informs patients about home health care, familiarizes them with your specific offerings, and motivates them to seek your help first with needs that extend beyond prescription medications and over-the-counter products. Consider:
- Store signage, both inside and outside
- Bag stuffers handed out to every pharmacy customer
- Advertisements in weekly circular or weekly local newspaper
- Local cable or radio commercials
- In-store promotion (e.g., advertise home health care at the pharmacy counter)
- Table tents in the waiting rooms of physicians’ offices
- Marketing and public relations co-operative with other businesses (e.g., flyers and referral campaigns)
- Health screenings (e.g., attract new patients with free bone density testing)
- Hosting a special event to introduce (or re-introduce) your home health care offerings
Get Started
Having read this series and completed all of the worksheets, you have a powerful collection of actionable knowledge that you can use to embark on a very profitable addition to your pharmacy. You should now be able to agree with the following statements.
- I know and can describe competitors in my area that offer home health care.
- I know what my competitors’ strengths and weaknesses are.
- I know what my pharmacy’s strongest opportunities are within HHC.
- I know what my current patients need in terms of home health care products and services.
- I know how much space I should devote to HHC within my pharmacy’s front-end.
- I know whether I am going to offer specialty services related to home health care.
- I know what my staff members need in order to provide HHC products and services to my patients.
- I know whether my staff needs additional training.
- I know how to build and promote my home health care business.
This information is critical to plotting your future course. Acting on the information is just as important as knowing it. It’s time to make a plan to accomplish the necessary tasks to increase your level of involvement in home health care or to enter the market for the first time. The table below offers an outline with task examples.
I hope this blog series has helped you determine whether it is worthwhile to offer home health care products in your pharmacy. If you are expanding or adding HHC, I wish you much success.