First-Hand Expertise

Blue Chip President and owner Ron Resnick knows from experience what support surface patients need.

• By Joseph Duffy
• Dec 01, 2010

Blue Chip President and owner Ron Resnick will tell you he is a man on a mission. After undergoing life-changing gastric bypass surgery seven and a half years ago to combat the results of a thyroidectomy, his “walking in his customers’ shoes” helps guide his company’s production of bariatric products.

As the owner of Blue Chip Medical Products for 16-and-a-half years, Resnick was 367 pounds before going in for surgery. Today, he weighs about 211.

“As somebody you would call morbidly obese at the time, based on the BMI index, my position is if I’m going to make a bariatric product, I want it to be comfortable and to look really good,” he said. Resnick recalls his struggles with air travel and trying to find shoes and clothes that fit and didn’t require constant altering. From those experiences his company’s philosophy became not to make a size but to make a product to fit the individual patient’s needs.

As part of this mission, Blue Chip Medical will do custom orders. Recently, Resnick received a request for a chair cushion that was 32 inches by 28 inches. The patient was embarrassed to divulge her weight so when she finally said she was between 400 and 450, Resnick made the cushion to accommodate 650 pounds, just in case. Resnick spoke with the dealer and the therapist, received a picture of the patient and how she sat, and discussed her needs. According to Resnick, that custom cushion went out in two days.

As a testament to his company’s product quality, Resnick says, “When I was going in for my gastric bypass surgery, I wasn’t afraid of dying — I was afraid of getting a pressure sore. So I made my own operating table mattress, my own recovery room mattress and my own hospital bed mattress.”

This article originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of HME Business.