Florida HME Associations Mount Up: Now There Are Three

ORLANDO — A third home medical equipment association has
entered the picture in Florida, this time a for-profit corporation
headed by the previous executive director of the Florida
Association of Medical Equipment Services.

Heather Allan, executive director of FAMES for nine years, said
last week she has formed the Florida Home Medical Equipment
Association Inc., which is based in Orlando.

“The goals of the organization are to provide cost-effective,
affordable education, information and a certain amount of
advocacy,” Allan said. “One of our concerns is that greater
attention needs to be paid to what the Florida legislators and
pertinent state agencies are doing. National issues are certainly
important and will receive an appropriate amount of our attention,
but those issues are very well covered by national organizations
such as [the American Association for Homecare]. Some of the state
issues have a tendency to fall through the cracks, and that can’t
happen.”

She added, “We want to have a more proactive approach to state
issues as opposed to reactive and we really want to have less
antagonistic relations with state entities.”

Allan said that a Web site is in the works, as are some
Webinars.

“We’re looking forward to the challenges the industry faces, and
we are looking forward to working with providers in Florida on the
issues they face — both the big ones and the small ones,” she
said.

Randy Schluter of Parker, Colo., is secretary/treasurer of
FHMEA. Allan said the vice president had not been confirmed,
although the association’s Articles of Incorporation list her
mother, Elizabeth M. Moran, director of the Medical Equipment
Suppliers Association, as the vice president.

The news comes in the wake of the announcement that FAMES, which
closed in January, was restructuring and had named long-time HME
provider and former president Joan Cross of C&C Homecare in
Bradenton as the new executive director. Greg Sims of Gator
Mobility in Gainesville is president. (See FAMES
Regroups: Joan Cross Is New Executive Director, March 23.)

In addition, the newly launched Florida Alliance of Home Care
Services, or FAHCS, is headed by Roger Ribas of Hometown Medical
Supply in Doral as president with Sean Schwinghammer, an advisor to
the Accredited Medical Equipment Providers of America, as executive
director. (See Florida
Providers Form New State Association, March 23.)

Both of the groups are non-profit organizations.

Of her new corporation, Allan said, “we structured it in the way
we did to avoid the pitfalls of non-profit corporation structures
and limitations.”

She added that FHMEA “certainly is not intending to work against
any other organization based in Florida. I think it is too soon to
tell how things will go in the state and whether or not there will
be any type of interaction or cooperation among any of the entities
that exist or will exist.”

For more information on FHMEA, call Allan at 407/421-6118.