Meeting Half Way. Part 1 ? mettheatre.org

Agreat deal of lip service has been given in the past years to the ways in which health clubs can align with the medical community to provide preventive and rehabilitative care. I say ?lip service? not because there haven?t been some clubs that have successfully positioned themselves to work with hospitals,butbecause most clubs and hospitals come from opposite sides of the spectrum, with different ideas about staffing and service. As a result, they have failed to meet each other half way.

The link between health and fitness is inseparable, which is probably why, during a panel discussion at the Club Industry conference this past October, a major topic of discussion was how health clubs can become apart of the healthcare continuum. Douglas Ribley, director of fitness and wellness at Akron General Health Systems, says that the health club industry is ?moving from a focus on fitness to a broader focus on wellness.?Even if this is true, few health clubs have gotten past the traditional fitness offerings. However, Ribley says that, now, hospitals are interested in using fitness as part of their treatment. And he?s right, as evidenced by the number of hospitals that have decided to go into the fitness business themselves (see Medical Fitness in the U.S.: A Market Overview, p.56).

So how does that create an opportunity for fitness facilities? According to Ribley, it provides a window for them to combine physical activity with the clinical component. However, the problem with this, as I see it, is twofold. First, the club industry has, by and large, not gone after the clinical component, like phase two rehabilitation. As Ribley explains, the first phase of rehab, which is offered by the hospital and funded by insurance, isn?t enough. ?There?s a market for phase two that our centers are positioned to offer,? explains Ribley. But few fitness centers offer it.

Second, older adults are those who are most attracted to wellness services, but most clubs still have not best positioned themselves to attract this market. Certainly, this market seems to be the fastest growing segment of health clubs, but it is certainly not the majority (see Why Hospital Fitness Centers Succeed, p.60). As John McCarthy, executive director of IHRSA, explains it, there is well-care and there is sick-care. Well-care is what the facilitiesoffer: fitness, weight loss, etc. Sick-care is the providence of medicine, and it is a service that fitness centers should stay out of. The middle ground between these two is where the industry needs to go, taking care of such things as insomnia, cholesterol levels, chronic health conditions, etc. And this, says McCarthy, mostly affects the over-40 population.

Here are great and strong pluses of generic prescription drugs. The medications that are available at an online drugstore are much cheaper than which are available in a local pharmaceutical establishment.

Tags: health clubs, hospital, medical community

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2012 at 10:41 am and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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