Marketing a health and fitness club falls into two separate but related tasks; namely, recruitment and retention of members. Recruitment refers to inviting and getting people to join the club while retention has to do with making them stay. The following tips will help you market your health and fitness club so that you will realise your revenue and profit objectives.
Clear targeting – It is important that you define clearly those you want to serve in the interest of precise messaging and response rate. If you send the right message to the right people at the right time, then they are more likely to answer you than otherwise. And the incidence of having the “wrong people” on your facility will be reduced.
The facility itself – This is key because this is arena or platform where your service is delivered. It should be well-appointed relative to the target market. The equipment should be clean and functional and varied. Not only that, the whole environment should send out health and fitness signals.
Your staff – Your clients would evaluate your club on the basis of the quality of interactions they have with your staff. Get in people with a service mentality. They should be professional, empathetic, enthusiastic, be prepared to take responsibility and go the proverbial extra mile to delight the customer.
Your processes – How easy is it to join your club and access your services? The forms for extracting members’ information should complete but brief enough not to look like a tax form.
Ancillary services – Remember that even a health and fitness club is a place for people to socialise and get some specialised education. You will enhance your members’ experience if you include a section for health foods and drinks as well as a library and bookshop stocking books and magazines on health and fitness topics. You can add variety by inviting experts to speak of vital health issues.
Provide for untoward events – Things happen and things do go wrong. Therefore I suggest you have a first aid section manned by those who know what to do in an emergency.Take these tips to heart and you should be able to recruit enough people into your health and fitness club, retain a high proportion of them and thereby lift the life time value of your members and hence your return on investment.

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. When I hear people talking about HIPAA, they are usually not talking about the original Act. They are talking about the Privacy Rule that was issued as a result of the HIPAA in the form of a Notice of Health Information Practices.The United States Department of Health & Human Services official Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule is 25 pages long, and that is just a summary of the key elements. So as you can imagine, it covers a lot of ground. What I would like to offer you here is a summary of the basics of the Privacy Rule.When it was enacted in 1996, the Privacy Rule established guidelines for the protection of individuals’s health information. The guidelines are written such that they make sure that an individual’s health records are protected while at the same time allowing needed information to be released in the course of providing health care and protecting the public’s health and well being. In other words, not just anyone can see a person’s health records. But, if you want someone such as a health provider to see your records, you can sign a release giving them access to your records.So just what is your health information and where does it come from? Your health information is held or transmitted by health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers. These are called covered entities in the wording of the rule.These guidelines also apply to what are called business associates of any health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers. Business associates are those entities that offer legal, actuarial, accounting, consulting, data aggregation, management, administrative, accreditation, or financial services.So, what does a typical Privacy Notice include?
The type of information collected by your health plan.
A description of what your health record/information includes.
A summary of your health information rights.
The responsibilities of the group health plan.

Let’s look at these one at a time:Information Collected by Your Health Plan:The group healthcare plan collects the following types of information in order to provide benefits:Information that you provide to the plan to enroll in the plan, including personal information such as your address, telephone number, date of birth, and Social Security number.Plan contributions and account balance information.The fact that you are or have been enrolled in the plans.Health-related information received from any of your physicians or other healthcare providers.Information regarding your health status, including diagnosis and claims payment information.Changes in plan enrollment (e.g., adding a participant or dropping a participant, adding or dropping a benefit.)Payment of plan benefits.Claims adjudication.Case or medical management.Other information about you that is necessary for us to provide you with health benefits.Understanding Your Health Record/Information:Each time you visit a hospital, physician, or other healthcare provider, a record of your visit is made. Typically, this record contains your symptoms, examination and test results, diagnoses, treatment, and a plan for future care or treatment.This information, often referred to as your health or medical record, serves as a:Basis for planning your care and treatment.Means of communication among the many health professionals who contribute to your care.Legal document describing the care you received.Means by which you or a third-party payer can verify that services billed were actually provided.Tool in educating health professionals.Source of data for medical research.Source of information for public health officials charged with improving the health of the nation.Source of data for facility planning and marketing.Tool with which the plan sponsor can assess and continually work to improve the benefits offered by the group healthcare plan. Understanding what is in your record and how your health information is used helps you to:Ensure its accuracy.Better understand who, what, when, where, and why others may access your health information.Make more informed decisions when authorizing disclosure to others.Your Health Information Rights:Although your health record is the physical property of the plan, the healthcare practitioner, or the facility that compiled it, the information belongs to you. You have the right to:Request a restriction on otherwise permitted uses and disclosures of your information for treatment, payment, and healthcare operations purposes and disclosures to family members for care purposes.Obtain a paper copy of this notice of information practices upon request, even if you agreed to receive the notice electronically.Inspect and obtain a copy of your health records by making a written request to the plan privacy officer.Amend your health record by making a written request to the plan privacy officer that includes a reason to support the request.Obtain an accounting of disclosures of your health information made during the previous six years by making a written request to the plan privacy officer.Request communications of your health information by alternative means or at alternative locations.Revoke your authorization to use or disclose health information except to the extent that action has already been taken.Group Health Plan Responsibilities:The group healthcare plan is required to:Maintain the privacy of your health information.Provide you with this notice as to the planâEUR(TM)s legal duties and privacy practices with respect to information that is collected and maintained about you.Abide by the terms of this notice.Notify you if the plan is unable to agree to a requested restriction.Accommodate reasonable requests you may have to communicate health information by alternative means or at alternative locations. The plan will restrict access to personal information about you only to those individuals who need to know that information to manage the plan and its benefits. The plan will maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your personal information. Under the privacy standards, individuals with access to plan information are required to:Safeguard and secure the confidential personal financial information and health information as required by law. The plan will only use or disclose your confidential health information without your authorization for purposes of treatment, payment, or healthcare operations. The plan will only disclose your confidential health information to the plan sponsor for plan administration purposes.Limit the collection, disclosure, and use of participant’s healthcare information to the minimum necessary to administer the plan.Permit only trained, authorized individuals to have access to confidential information.Other items that may be addressed include:Communication with family. Under the plan provisions, the company may disclose to an employee’s family member, guardian, or any other person you identify, health information relevant to that person’s involvement in your obtaining healthcare benefits or payment related to your healthcare benefits.Notification. The plan may use or disclose information to notify or assist in notifying a family member, personal representative, or another person responsible for your care, your location, general condition, plan benefits, or plan enrollment.Business associates. There are some services provided to the plan through business associates. Examples include accountants, attorneys, actuaries, medical consultants, and financial consultants, as well as those who provide managed care, quality assurance, claims processing, claims auditing, claims monitoring, rehabilitation, and copy services. When these services are contracted, it may be necessary to disclose your health information to our business associates in order for them to perform the job we have asked them to do. To protect employee’s health information, however, the company will require the business associate to appropriately safeguard this information.Benefit coordination. The plan may disclose health information to the extent authorized by and to the extent necessary to comply with plan benefit coordination.Workers compensation. The plan may disclose health information to the extent authorized by and to the extent necessary to comply with laws relating to workers compensation or other similar programs established by law.Law enforcement. The plan may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes as required by law or in response to a valid subpoena.Sale of business. If the plan sponsor’s business is being sold, then medical information may be disclosed. The plan reserves the right to change its practices and to make the new provisions effective for all protected health information it maintains. Should the company’s information practices change, it will mail a revised notice to the address supplied by each employee.The plan will not use or disclose employee’s health information without their authorization, except as described in this notice.In Summary:As an employee, you should be aware of your rights and feel confident that your employer is abiding by the guidelines of the Privacy Rule.As an employer offering group insurance health care benefits, you should make your employees aware of their rights and should give them an avenue to obtain more information or to report a problem.When you get your health insurance coverage through a broker that specializes in employee benefits, they should provide you with all of the necessary information and Privacy Notice to make sure you comply with the HIPAA guidelines.

Charcot’s foot is one of the many problems which might occur in those with diabetes mellitus. The higher blood sugar levels that stem from all forms of diabetes have an affect on numerous body systems including the eyesight, renal system as well as nerves. In long standing cases, particularly if there has been an unsatisfactory control of the blood sugar levels, you can find problems with the nerves supplying the feet. This will make the feet in danger of issues as if something fails, you don’t know it has gone wrong as you can not really feel it due to the harm to the nerves. This might be something as simple as standing on a rusty nail and that getting contaminated and you are not aware that you’ve stood on the nail. Should it be a blister or ingrown toenail which gets infected and you do not know that it is present on the foot unless you have a look. This is why foot care can be so necessary for those with diabetes and why it will be provided a great deal of emphasis. A Charcot foot is the destruction occurring to the bones and joints if you have an injury and you do not know that the injury has happened.

A way of looking at it could be to consider this way: pretend that you sprain your ankle horribly and you also are not aware that you have simply because you do not experience the pain from it. You then carry on and walk around on it. Picture all of the additional harm which you do by walking about on it. The earliest you may possibly discover that there may be something wrong happens when you take a seat and look at the feet and you observe that one is a great deal more swollen compared to the other foot. This is exactly what occurs in individuals with diabetes who develop a Charcot’s foot. There may be some destruction, such as a sprained ankle or maybe a progressive failure of the arch of the foot and as no pain is sensed they carry on and walk around on it. It should be apparent simply how much more injury that gets done to the original injury prior to the problem is finally observed because of the swelling. At times there is not much swelling, but the Charcot’s foot is picked up from the difference in temperature between the two feet as a result of inflammation related process in the damaged foot that generates more warmth.

The development of a Charcot foot really needs to be dealt with as a bit of an urgent situation since the further it advances the much more serious it’s going to be and the more challenging it can be to handle. The individual definitely needs to quit all weightbearing without delay or at least obtain a walking support so that the damage is protected. For the not too major instances and those conditions which were serious and have improved a really supportive orthotic in the footwear is required to support the feet and the injuries. Sometimes surgical procedures are required to straighten the subluxed and dislocated bones. By far the most critical situations can end up with the foot and/or leg required to be amputated as the trauma has been doing an excessive amount of impairment.