How Often Can You Have a Toradol Shot
In the mid 1990s, Americans studying abroad began widening their horizons--instead of spending a semester in Florence or Paris, they were heading off to India, Thailand, Bolivia and across.
Fran Lessans, a nurse at a higher health clinic in Baltimore, noticed that although students got the required travel inoculations, they were otherwise unprepared. "The health data they were getting was poor at best, and then I started developing educational materials," Lessans says. "Word spread--I didn't even do any marketing--and people started coming out of the woodwork, wanting me to take care of them."
That's when she got the idea to set out on her own. She partnered with a doctor, and they bought a stockpile of vaccines and set upwardly a small, part-time clinic offering individualized travel-health advice and injections. A couple of years later, Lessans was working as a nurse at Maryland General Hospital--and getting a constant stream of requests for after-hours travel consultations.
"The CEO of the hospital asked me, 'What do we have to do to keep yous and your business here?'" Lessans recalls. "And I told him, 'Purchase a franchise.'"
He did. And now 15 years later, Passport Wellness has 170 clinics around the country, dispensing travel vaccines, flu shots and other therapeutic injectables such as human growth hormone and osteoporosis shots.
Passport Wellness fifty-fifty trains government agencies in dispensing anthrax and smallpox vaccines. Nosotros talked to Lessans about becoming a medical entrepreneur and the changing globe of travel health.
A travel-medicine clinic: now that is a niche.
The earth is a smaller place than it was. Swine flu, anthrax, avian flu, SARS and other issues have brought vaccines to the forefront. Businesses are expanding into India and China and the developing earth, and at that place are more people traveling, more scourges, more media attention. It's terrible to say, but when there are disasters, we do better. And I've found that a lot of people come in because they know someone who got sick abroad--if they have a cousin who went to Greece and got hepatitis, they'll make an engagement.
Who are your franchisees?
Nosotros have doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, people who were downsized looking for a franchise, people with medical folks in their family unit. A lot of our franchisees are well educated and looking for more stimulation than what an automotive or fast-food franchise tin can provide. At that place is a torso of cognition hither that is always changing and you demand to stay abreast of it. You have to have a medical director involved.
We're meticulous most data drove and carry studies. This is more than of a professional franchise versus a blue-collar franchise, which is good news and bad news: I can't sell to all comers, only my franchisees don't demand their hand held as much.
How about the off-season?
Travel medicine can exist slow in the autumn, but we specialize in vaccines of all kinds. We've been involved in several bioterrorism initiatives with the Section of Defence, training them on using the anthrax vaccine. In the fall, we do a lot of corporate flu and wellness contracts and have done vaccinations for T. Rowe Cost, Delta Airlines and Constellation Energy. Plus we run a 24/7 telephone call center that answers travel wellness questions from military machine personnel and Department of Defense employees.
Why go to Passport Health instead of a doc?
You can telephone call and tell us where you're going, and and so exercise the forms online. In that location's no down time--you lot're never sitting in an exam room waiting. It'due south the Nordstrom approach to medicine--your time is valuable. [In Baltimore, for $48,] we give you a bound book of pertinent information and prove a video about what to expect, what to eat and not swallow. We teach you how to properly use bug repellent. This is our core business concern, and there's a lot of value because nosotros're not stretched thin doing anything else.
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