- Deborah
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2960899
Dec. 22, 2004, 11:22PM Doctor offers gift alternative Health care can be purchased as holiday present By SALATHEIA BRYANT /Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
Houston physician Dr. Margit Winstrom has a suggestion for those who have everything and, perhaps more importantly, those lacking adequate health insurance.
At her family practice in southwest Houston, pap smears, blood tests, prostate screenings and general office visits can be purchased, personalized and packaged with festive wrapping for Christmas, Mother's Day or birthdays. Each card comes with a description of the service written in calligraphy.
"It's a really nice gift," Winstrom said from her office suite off the Southwest Freeway. "It's needed out there. Hopefully people will realize this is truly a gift of health."
Gift cards and certificates, long a fixture of the U.S. retail economy, have found their way into the white-coat world of doctors and hospitals.
For this holiday season, for example, the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, is marketing a Healthy Heart gift card good for a comprehensive heart evaluation. Cost: $299.
"People buy gift cards pretty much for everything these days. Why not health?" said Shervin Kalinia, administrative director of marketing for St. Luke's. "Heart disease is one of the highest causes of death. They can find out how healthy their heart is. We're raising the awareness of heart disease."
Called good business sense Dr. Winston Price, president of the National Medical Association, said gift cards and vouchers are used by some doctors and hospitals because they make good business sense.
"Gift cards have been a good business strategy in other areas, why not health care?" he said.
Winstrom started offering her health packages about six months ago. She bills herself as an old-fashioned family doctor who still spends time tenderly talking with her patients during office visits. Frustrated with the red tape of the insurance industry, she went to a payment-at-time-of-service system several years ago.
With economic times getting tougher, Winstrom noticed a number of patients were going without seeing a doctor because they no longer had health insurance. That's when she came up with the idea of offering basic preventive care packages targeted at small-business owners or uninsured individuals.
Winstrom created brochures to market the concept and pitched it to small-business owners to give as bonuses, birthday or Christmas gifts.
"I thought, we have to figure out a way to at least get them some basic preventive care. It's a new ballgame out there," Winstrom said. "To me this is so much more important than a Botox injection. These are things that can save their lives."
Looking out for family When Mary Parker heard about Winstrom's medical packages she decided to give a gift card to her younger sister.
Parker and her sister are both independent insurance saleswoman without health insurance. Parker said the medical gift certificate became the ideal gift after she heard her sister complain once about a rash on her hand and another time about a spider bite.
Parker bought a $400 package for her sister that includes a head-to-toe physical exam and several office visits.
"It was sort of an investment in my sister," said Parker. "This is a way she can have that primary care that she needs."