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26 December 2011

Good Samaritan Health & Wellness Center, Part 1

Posted by Jody under: Health .

It seems that the general public is fed up. Weight-reduction programs with expensive program fees that require the purchase of special foods and supplements have left consumers full. They’ve had enough.

Enter Project Shape-Up, an innovative weight management program that has consumers coming back for more. Good Samaritan Health & Wellness Center created Project Shape-Up to bail out its previous weight management program , which had dwindled from 20 to three participants in less than five years.

What went wrong? That’s what program facilitator Jeff Saunders needed to know. Before he began creating Project Shape-Up, Good Samaritan went directly to consumers to find out their needs. The hospital center surveyed everyone from current members to people who had inquired about a weight management program in the past. “We wanted to get a fresh perspective, and it was an eye-opener,” Saunders says.

One of the biggest concerns was price. Like many programs, Good Samaritan’s former weight management program was priced at a hefty $350 for a 12-week program that included a club membership, one-on-one consulting, stress testing and more. “We found participants still wanted 12 weeks,” Saunders says, and were interested in group programming. They were not interested in diets that required complex calculations, prescriptions or drastic changes in lifestyle.

Upon finishing the necessary market research, Good Samaritan went to task creating a new program. “We decided to come up with a mechanism to bring costs down. We found that the magic number in this market area was $99,” Saunders explains.

To continue providing 12 weeks of programming at two-thirds less cost, Saunders created Project Shape-Up as a group program. He explains that consumers enjoy being part of a group, and the facility is able to keep costs down by educating more than one person at a time.

Another move to cut costs included the removal of the membership requirement from the program. Instead, Project Shape-Up participants are allowed entry into three exercise sessions during their 12-week program. These sessions can include aerobics, group walks, weight training or a special class designed for the Project Shape-Up group. This move was beneficial to all parties involved, according to Saunders and manager Jan Wolf. “It’s a nice introduction to those who are resistant to exercise,” Wolf says. “Under the old program, they were kind of left on their own to do their workout.”

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