Healthy Alternatives may just be one of Tyrone’s best kept secrets. Located near the Bald Eagle Intersection, Healthy Alternatives has quietly grown since it was first founded in June of 2000.
Owned and operated by Chuck and Cindee Banas of Tyrone, Healthy Alternatives has had continuous growth that in turn has provided employment to nine Tyrone and Snyder Township residents.
Healthy Alternatives provides medical equipment for purchase or rental, medical and surgical supplies, medical gloves, janitorial products and capital equipment.
The market for Healthy Alternatives is very wide spread. Currently, they are providing products to long term care centers, personal and assisted living centers, physician offices, dental clinics, and individuals requiring any sort of medical equipment and supplies. They have also expanded their line to work with hotels, daycares, janitorial supplies, restaurants, kitchen equipment, carpeting, linen and furniture.
In addition to this customer mix, Healthy Alternatives has become a specialist in providing medical equipment, respiratory equipment and supplies, medical/surgical supplies and services to correctional facilities throughout the United States.
Healthy Alternatives has developed a solid network of business partners and professionals to enable it to continue to grow on a regional and national basis. Two key partners are McKesson and HPSI. Recently representatives from these two companies visited Healthy Alternatives to discuss future business opportunities.
McKesson, a Fortune 16 company, has been in business for 170 years and is the largest distributor of medical supplies to nursing homes, home health care facilities, resellers and long term care facilities. According to Molly Enos, a McKesson representative, more than 55,000 health care providers count on McKesson Medical-Surgical.
Literature provided by the company states they are the industry frontrunner in developing quality products as well as innovative point-of-care and customer service programs.
Both Healthy Alternatives and McKesson work closely with HPSI. A representative for HPSI, Liz Burns, explained that in laymen’s terms, HPSI is like the Sam’s Club of medical supplies. A company or business can become a member, which then causes prices to drop. HPSI supports the companies with which they work. The list of personalized services provided by HPSI includes dietary, medical supplies, capital equipment, enteral nutrition, housekeeping, ware washing chemicals, linen, rehab services, office supplies, pharmacy and facility maintenance among many others.
All three companies work together to bring quality service to their customers. With their solid partnership, Healthy Alternatives has been able to service customers in a larger geographical area than otherwise possible. All agree that they service customers based on what is best for the customer, wherever the customer can get the best prices and service.
A few years ago, Healthy Alternatives was asked to supply their goods and services to eight State Correctional Facilities in Central Pennsylvania. After three years of providing services, Healthy Alternatives was asked to provide these services to all 29 State Correctional Institutions throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
This program became so successful and cost effective that Healthy Alternatives was asked to continue to provide these services for an additional five years.
In addition, Healthy Alternatives provides these same programs to correctional facilities in Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Arizona and Texas. There are several other states who have placed calls to the Tyrone company inquiring about securing their services as their expertise in this area has now become nationally recognized.
In addition to the correctional business, Healthy Alternatives also supplies nursing homes, assisted living centers and hospitals with products and supplies throughout Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Indiana, Virginia, Nevada and Arizona.
In the immediate area, Healthy Alternatives supplies a wide variety of supplies to area residents. This includes such items as oxygen, hospital beds, wheelchairs, sports medicine products, diabetic supplies and equipment, ostomy supplies, safety aides and wound care equipment and supplies.
Chuck Banas has been in this business for 27 years and Cindee Banas for 22 years. Combined this is 49 years of developing the expertise needed to be successful in this type of business.
Due in part to this expertise, Healthy Alternatives has been selected by a nationally owned hospice company to provide all of the durable medical equipment, supplies and services exclusively to hospice patients within a 50 mile radius of Altoona.
Currently, Healthy Alternatives is Tyrone’s only full service medical equipment and medical supply company. This created an additional market place as local residents wanted to be serviced by local people who had the ability to meet their medical requirements quickly and professionally.
A number of local residents have already converted their healthcare equipment and supply needs to Healthy Alternatives.
According to Chuck Banas, in June, Healthy Alternatives will be five-years-old and has experienced a continual and excellent growth over this five-year period. Each year sales have increased, as have the number of locally-based employees. In February will come the announcement of a new product line that Healthy Alternatives has been asked to be the exclusive distributor of throughout all of Central Pennsylvania.
“We are very excited with this new product line. It is breakthrough technology throughout the industry and will render many other products obsolete within a short period of time,” said Banas.
Between excellent networking, years of professional expertise and a solid reputation for excellent professional and quality services the future of Healthy Alternatives looks very bright indeed.
