Competitive Bidding: Trying to Stop the Train

NORCROSS, Ga. — Adding new technologies, diversifying into
new service lines and scouring your business for efficiencies can
definitely help prepare for competitive bidding, according
to provider Todd Tyson, president of Hi-Tech Healthcare. But the
changes won’t be instant.

“Don’t think you just turn on a switch and everything works
tomorrow,” Tyson said. “It takes a lot of work to get prepared for
this.”

For the past three years, Tyson has embraced automation,
outsourcing and expansion to buffer his business from the bid
program’s effects, he said. As a member of the Georgia Association
of Medical Equipment Services, the Committee to Save Independent
HME Suppliers and the American Association for Homecare, he has
also worked hard in support of efforts to derail the program.

“We all see the train coming, so we are still in that effort of
trying to prepare and being engaged to try and learn more about
what to do and be ready for it,” he said.

For starters, Tyson said, “We’ve looked for every efficiency we
can find in our business.”

Based in Norcross, an Atlanta suburb, with eight locations,
Hi-Tech has improved time management with flex schedules and
overtime monitoring, centralized intake with emphasis on “clean in,
clean out,” and incorporated both GPS routing and new handheld
point-of-delivery devices. A central dispatch has “one person
watching every one of our drivers and every vehicle move live in
real time,” Tyson said.

After converting to eFax, “we have seen our DSO reduced by 10
days,” he said. The company has also outsourced CPAP supply
replacement, “so we’ve got a zero inventory” with no dead inventory
sitting on the shelves. In times like these, Tyson said, you can’t
allow any savings to fall through the cracks.

Historically focused in the respiratory sector, the 21-year-old
company has transitioned to non-delivery systems for oxygen. But it
has also moved into services “such as simple power and other things
we’ve never done before,” said Tyson, including expansion into some
service lines outside of Medicare.

“Our biggest thing now is trying to put away some cash,” he
said, referring to the continuing credit crunch. “I don’t
necessarily want to slow our growth, but my biggest fear is that we
would grow faster than I could finance … because my bank
certainly won’t give me any more money.”

With all of the changes, Tyson said, “I feel pretty confident
that if [the next round] doesn’t bid to the bottom, we’ll survive
it. I hope we would win at least one or more of the locations, and
if we don’t, we’re diversified enough outside that that we could
survive.”

The company has expanded geographically, too, recently opening a
location in Birmingham, Ala. — its fifth inside a Round 2
CBA. With existing branches in metro Atlanta and Chattanooga,
Tenn., that gives Hi-Tech shots at three bid areas in Round 2.

“Hopefully we’ll get three bites of the apple,” Tyson said. “I
just hope it’s not the poison apple.”

His best hope about competitive bidding, though, he added, is
that more providers will join the fight against it. “Get involved,
get engaged and … keep trying to stop this train,” he
urged.

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