The power of ideas

I’ve always been an ideas person. I notice and love novel ideas as I see them. I also have this tendency to test the essence and value of any idea. (That might sound very complicated but all it really means is I try and figure out if the idea creator had some common sense in bringing the idea into place.)

Just the other day, I saw a banner hanging in Lahug that really caught my attention.

ROSE + CLINIC

By looking at the words alone, it doesn’t really strike an interesting chord but if you dig deeper, there is a novel and excellent idea underneath.

Rose Pharmacy has been in the business of selling medicines and medical supplies in the Philippines for a while now but the novel concept (i.e. value-added service) that they’ve initiated is the addition of a Clinic.

Yes! A clinic within a pharmacy. Genius, right? And who would’ve thought someone would catch on with this idea. (Not really sure if the concept is already in place in other countries but in the Philippines, I think it certainly is a good one.)

When you think about it, it sounds pretty basic to have doctors and medicines in one place other than hospitals yet the idea never materialized until now.

Why is the concept great and why it would totally work?

Clinic Alone or Pharmacy alone VS Pharmacy + Clinic Combo

If you went to a clinic and had yourself checked, you’d have to set an appointment and honestly, doctors are notoriously good at letting you wait in their offices for long periods of time. Considering you booked the appointment in advance, you’d think they’d be there when you arrived, right? But no, you have to wait until they get to their clinics and then you’d have to wait for your appointment order. Ofcourse for some reason, there just are way too many Med Reps who don’t happen to have appointments but still get a priority over all other patients. Then your turn comes and the doctor just talks to you for a bit and sometimes barely even touches you but break out the prescription pad after and then prescribes your medicine. After which, you have to pay the check-up fee and then proceed to a pharmacy to get your meds. So when you go to a clinic alone, the equation is something like this - -

CLINIC = advanced booking + long waits with Med Reps in between patients + doctor’s fee

Even if the waiting does not necessarily show up in figures, time is still a commodity and has a price, a higher one at that.

Now that you have a prescription or have no prescription but would just like to buy an over-the-counter medicine and now head for the pharmacy; you then get your priority number and queue up. Your turn comes up and the pharmacist deciphers the doctor’s cryptic message on the Rx pad and tells you availability and prices and finally you purchase the medicines you need according to your budget. The equation would be like this - -

PHARMACY = prescription pad with cryptic message + inventory check + price check + money

Pretty straight forward if you have the prescription, the medicines are available and there is no long queue but still a lot of other loose ends.

With the combo Rose Pharmacy + Clinic though, I would imagine this scenario:

Patient walks into the value-added pharmacy + clinic facility – proceeds to the doctor’s clinic and gets checked up by the doctor – walks over to the nearby pharmacy counter and purchases his medicines. (Assuming, there is constant communication with the doctor and the pharmacy on inventory, the prescribed medicines should readily be available and in stock.) The equation would then look like this --

ROSE PHARMACY + CLINIC = no advanced appointments needed + no long waits for doctors and interruptions from Med Reps + ease of medicine purchase

I think the onset of the Rose + Clinic concept is brilliant and those who do not catch up on it will be at a disadvantage. Sure, it might cost more to merge these two services of the medicine industry into one facility yet it should be beneficial both on the business side and on the consumer side because of the degree of convenience it provides. And no matter the equation, convenience always translates to more business and ergo more money.

So thumbs up to the think tanks of Rose Pharmacy for this ingenious idea, they really were putting their brains into good use unlike others…

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If you missed this news when it went out in the local papers, here is a little trivia: A certain NGO (non-government organization) in Cebu with the directive and support from Department of Health had apparently been told by another government agency to stop the distribution of free syringes to drug addicts just very recently because of the “negative message” it promotes. (Duh!)

This brilliant solution to give out free syringes to drug addicts was supposed to curb the increasing incidence of HIV cases among the “drug addict population” due to sharing of infected needles.

I am not one who does expletives but this case was really calling for one. “What the @$%*($%&!” (Now, we got that out of the way, I can breathe better.)

Who in his right mind would ever think of this type of solution to the ever nagging problem on increasing HIV infections?! True, the rise of HIV cases no matter which sector in society, is a big problem but putting a small band aid to a large wound does not do any good. It exposes the bigger areas and makes it more prone to higher infection! (I don’t mean to be a self-righteous person who nags about problems in society yet cannot afford to offer a solution but I have to say what they did was totally crazy and should not have passed the supposedly scrutinizing eyes of government agencies that apparently have more rigid standards and regulations.)

Clearly, their think tanks are depleted and should be replenished as they are coming up with crappy and sloppy ideas and they are misusing our taxes! (Grrr… Do I need to even mention PDAF scandal?)

Anyway, this post was meant to illustrate the power of ideas - - excellent and awful. Hopefully, I’ve accomplished that on this post. (I do apologize for the expletives…)

Now, to hunt for more great ideas…

Nmed @5:14pm 07/01/14

(pictures courtesy of google search)