n o n i o t i c t e c f : e n n f : I o n n i I reevveennttio Pr P
BY GP D E R O S N SPO
Be Their Infection Prevention Hero With great power comes great profitability They may not be the diabolical costumed maniacs you see in the movies, but supervillains are real and it is up to you to stop them (cape, tights, and superpowers optional). The villain is disease, and you and your customers are on the frontlines of a literal fight to save the world every single day. With the right approach to your infection prevention offerings, you can improve the health of your practice and become a hero to your accounts. For many reps, the infection prevention category is an untapped source of power. In most cases the infection prevention category represents more than 30 percent of the total med-surg sales to a practice or a hospital. But for various reasons, many reps don’t see the category as a priority. Reps may tend to shy away from the category because of the lack of regulatory and financial incentives for the markets served by their accounts. Now, possibly more than ever before, infection prevention is a priority in the acute care market. Acute care organizations are under tremendous pressure and highly incentivized to make infection prevention a priority. Like Metropolis has Superman, most of the acute care market is already “taken care of ” by various GPOs, RPCs, and so on. Yet while the acute care market may face the most regulatory pressure to step up its infectionprevention game, disease doesn’t limit itself to the emergency
Most tend to think that the category only contains a few, lowdollar products like hand soaps, surface disinfectants, and personal protective equipment such as gloves or surgical masks.
department. Physician groups and individual physician offices, dermatology offices, specialty services, long-term care facilities – the rest of the continuum of care is holding out for a hero. Among reps there is a widespread (and inaccurate) view that infection prevention isn’t big enough or lucrative enough to prioritize. Most tend to think that the category only contains a few, low-dollar products like hand soaps, surface disinfectants, and personal protective equipment such as gloves or surgical masks. But those products are only the core of the infection prevention area. A complete infection prevention program includes each and every product that can be used to break the chain of infection.
Be the street-wise Hercules – fight the rising odds So what would a complete infection prevention program look like? A robust infection prevention offering includes everything from the obvious products like gloves and surface disinfectant down to the everyday necessities. Every single practice and hospital has an essential need for many other related products like paper towels, toilet paper, facial tissue, and soap and/or sanitizer. For example, nurses wash their hands countless times every
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June 2016
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