Medtrade Reflects an Industry in Turmoil; Attendee Board in the Works

ATLANTA–With an eye toward building a better Medtrade, Group
Show Director Kevin Bird said Friday that he is putting together an
attendee advisory board.

An exhibitor board already exists for the annual HME expo, “but
the providers are 50 percent of who we service. I do need to know
what they want,” said Bird. “Without their feedback, they get what
I think they want.”

Bird said he is calling providers to discuss their needs. “I
will look at every suggestion that comes in,” he said.

The new board comes on the heels of rumors that surfaced at
Medtrade, Oct. 2-4 in Orlando, suggesting that the 28-year-old
trade show was in trouble.

Nielsen Business Media, the show’s producers, reported total
attendance at 13,000, including providers and manufacturers, down
from last year’s 15,000. The number of exhibitors also declined,
from 850 in 2006 to 750.

“Attendance was down and the aisles were bare,” said Dave
McCausland, senior vice president of planning and government
affairs for The Roho Group.

Such concerns prompted some manufacturers, including industry
giant Invacare, to question publicly whether the company would
participate in either Medtrade Spring, set for Long Beach, Calif.,
in May, or next fall’s Medtrade in Atlanta.

Even before the show opened its doors, Drive Medical–which in
previous years had been one of Medtrade’s largest
exhibitors–advertised its elected absence from the show floor. And
on Oct. 1, Permobil announced plans to forego exhibiting at both
Medtrade events next year, saying it would instead host a rehab
summit in the spring for its certified provider network.
Ironically, the company’s booth was among this year’s busiest.

Bird acknowledged the drop in attendance, but said Medtrade
officials are “in conversation” with all major manufacturers about
the upcoming shows.

“We are on a 13-month sales cycle and at this time last year,
not one of the majors had signed their sales contract, either,” he
said. “From our vantage point, nothing has changed. It’s just that
[those rumors] spread this year more so than ever … The intent of
Medtrade is always to have every major manufacturer there to
support the providers who do attend.”

Medtrade demographics have certainly changed over the years,
Bird said. He noted, for example, a shift in the provider profile
of those attending. “I think the overall attendee this year was
probably the president or CEO,” he said. “With the industry being
what it is, they are not sending their whole staff anymore. They
are sending the mandatory people who need to come and they are
looking for operational information.”

Bird said the shift reflects in the popularity of Medtrade’s
educational component, which has grown steadily. More than 2,300
attended seminars this year.

The top five sessions that drew the biggest audiences, he said,
were all operationally based: a Medicare update from consultant
Andrea Stark of MiraVista; a session on data management by Miriam
Lieber of Lieber Consulting; a how-to seminar on preventing billing
errors by Jane Bunch of CareCentric; a lesson on team-building from
Richard Davis of Barnes Healthcare Services; and a two-hour manual
wheelchair coding update moderated by Rita Hostak of Sunrise
Medical and Dr. Doran Edwards of the SADMERC.

Providers seeking information consistently flocked two-deep
around the DME MAC booth, and mini-seminars held on the show floor
also were well-attended.

“We’ve had 350 people come by in two days,” said K. Mark Blount,
vice president of marketing for software provider Brightree. The
company offered a PowerPoint presentation at its booth every 30
minutes or so, Blount said.

Some buying groups also reported stepped-up action. “We broke
our goal the first day with 28 new members,” said Jim Walsh,
president and general counsel for VGM. By the time the show was
over, the buying group had added some 50 new members to its
rolls.

“The number one concern is the expansion of competitive bidding
coming next year. [Providers] want to protect their business. These
people have been building their businesses over years, and they’re
concerned,” Walsh said.

Val Cochran of The Med Group also saw increased interest in
membership, even, she noted, from larger HME companies that
traditionally have not needed a buying group to get the best
prices. “They are looking for more effectiveness for their
business,” Cochran said.

Buyers were ‘serious’
Other exhibitors said although booth traffic was down, those
providers coming in were “serious buyers.”

“Providers in attendance this year seem to be more focused,”
said Duane Ridenour, director of implementations for Universal
Software Solutions, Davis, Mich. “It used to be that people would
wander the floor. But this year providers seem to know exactly what
they’re looking for and they’re going for it.”

“At shows in the past, you couldn’t even move in our booth. But
those days are probably gone,” said Invacare’s Sandy Habecker,
manager of trade shows and events. She added, however, that
providers seemed enthusiastic about new products, and about the
future. “The biggest question is ‘What’s the first day we can buy
this?’” Habecker said.

Stephen O’Hare, president of orthopedic and diabetic shoemaker
Pedors, said his company also had seen good traffic. “I’m pleased
we had a good location and we did okay,” he said. A neighboring
manufacturer had drawn a lot of traffic, he said, which “kind of
helped us a little bit, and we were up front and people found us
easily.”

Some providers, O’Hare said, had “come with the objective of
sourcing and buying product,” but others “were on an exploratory
mission, looking to see … what’s out there, to get a feeling as
to what the next thing is and the general direction they should be
taking.”

Consultant Sarah Hanna of ECS Billing & Consulting, Tiffin,
Ohio, said she talked with providers at the show who were naturally
“a little scared about the future for their businesses.” However,
she continued, “those who are here and looking to survive are
becoming better businesspeople and operating more efficiently, so
that’s a positive. We can’t operate inefficiently because we’ll
waste all of the dollars that we don’t have anymore.”

Medtrade is industry ‘meeting
place’
As it has traditionally, Medtrade 2007 mirrored the state of HME.
With a rash of legislative bills that would impact the industry in
flux in Congress, attendees heard a call to action echoing through
the Orange County Convention Center.

Keynote speakers via video were U.S. Reps. John Tanner, D-Tenn.,
and David Hobson, R-Ohio, co-authors of H.R. 1845, the
Tanner-Hobson bill. The proposed measure would allow those
providers who do not win a bid to continue to do Medicare business
under the new competitive bidding rates. But the bill, which
currently carries 121 co-sponsors, needs more support, the
congressmen said.

“John and I are working to get a broad base of support for our
bill … but we need your help,” Hobson said. “We need providers to
write, call and visit with your congressmen and senators. They need
to hear firsthand from you about how your business and the services
you provide to their constituents will be adversely affected by the
changes being made by CMS.”

To that purpose, the American Association for Homecare held its
inaugural Stand Up for Home Care reception on the first night of
the show. With 400 attendees, the event raised approximately
$75,000 for a new public awareness campaign to promote the mission
of the home care industry.

That, according to Bird, was also the main message of this
year’s Medtrade. “People have to get involved and not just sit by
and hope that someone else does it for [them] or wish that things
would change,” he said.

What will the message be in subsequent Medtrades? No one, not
even Bird, is sure what the expo and conference will look like. But
the industry’s changes demand that the show change as well, said
McCausland, who has been attending the annual event since the
mid-1980s.

Those were the glory days, when upwards of 30,000 people
attended Medtrade (not including exhibitors) and 1,200 booths
filled 320,000 square feet, organizers said. Then, the show was
always held in November in Atlanta. “You could plan your year
around it to some extent,” McCausland said.

But now there are several things that place Medtrade in a
challenging position, McCausland believes.

“One is simply the return on investment both for the attendees
and the manufacturers … As reimbursement has continued to be
ratcheted down, it has reduced the providers’ ability to literally
choose the products they purchase. Before, people would come to
Medtrade with a briefcase full of purchase orders. They don’t
necessarily do that anymore,” he said.

In addition, as reimbursement on most HME products has suffered
deep cuts, the cost of attending Medtrade–travel, hotel and meal
expenses–has escalated.

Medtrade is also running up against stiff international
competition. Both the Rehacare show in Dusseldorf, Germany, and the
Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo were held the
same week as Medtrade. Rehacare drew 47,000 people; the HCR show
drew 25,000.

That’s important, McCausland noted, because many of the largest
U.S. companies are now selling internationally–and that market is
growing.

“So, do they invest their money in the growing market or in the
flat market?” he questioned. Despite such concerns, McCausland said
Roho plans on exhibiting at both Medtrade Spring and Medtrade
2008.

Bird, who was appointed show director in late June, is cognizant
of the need for change–and the need for Medtrade. “The model of
Medtrade still remains the same,” he said. “With [the American
Association for Homecare’s] help, we are there to educate and to
provide a forum, which is our show floor, for business between
providers and vendors.”

It is important that those entities have a place to gather, Bird
said. “The word that comes to mind is ‘community,’” he said. “We
are the meeting place for the HME community … This is a place
where the industry can get together to share best practices and
find out what’s going on in Washington, D.C.”

Perhaps Cindy Hubers’ experience reflected that sense. The
manager of Pungo River Pharmacy, a family-run business in Belhaven,
S.C., Hubers was one of those looking for information at the DME
MAC booth. It was her first time at Medtrade.

“I’m so excited I can hardly stand it,” she said. Hubers
absorbed loads of information not only from the sessions but from
the people she met, she said, because she wants to be prepared for
competitive bidding. “We want to learn from those who are going
through it now,” Hubers said.

And the best place to do that, she felt, was at Medtrade.

Bird is soliciting comments on Medtrade via e-mail at [email protected].