A Fresh Approach

Running a successful HME and attracting referral sources is challenging, but it doesn’t have to be brain surgery. “I think ordering oxygen should be as easy as ordering a pizza,” says Jason Seeley, the 29-year-old vice president of Columbus, Ohio-based DASCO Home Medical Equipment.

DASCO runs its HME business on simple philosophies and a youthful spirit that have been parlayed into measurable growth. The company has seven locations throughout Ohio, and the 7,500-square-foot main office in Columbus currently is undergoing an expansion to 16,000 square feet.

The company reported more than $10 million in revenue for 2003, and Seeley says that’s a 30 percent increase over sales in 2002, when the sales team he implemented began putting the young man’s business strategy to work.

DASCO — Donald Anthony Seeley Company — opened in 1987 when Donald Seeley, Jason’s father, bought it from Rite Aid Pharmacies’ home health care division.

Jason grew up in the HME business and remembers washing wheelchairs for $2 an hour for his father. In 1987, the business was set up as a traditional HME with a variety of products and services, but since Jason and his sister Rachel assumed active roles in running the company, 80 percent of DASCO’s revenue now is generated from respiratory customers. While the company also provides wheelchairs, hospital beds, diabetic supplies and aids to daily living, DASCO primarily promotes nebulizers, medications and CPAP.

To increase respiratory referrals, Jason has streamlined the oxygen-ordering process for physicians with what he calls the “Quick Script.” The simple document looks like a prescription pad that uses check boxes with essential questions that the doctor fills out and sends back.

The Quick Script is the foundation of Seeley’s streamlined ordering approach and the inspiration for his oxygen-pizza comparison.

“If you go into a doctor’s office and ask doctors their No. 1 complaint, they will say it’s that they get 10 calls back after the initial [oxygen] order with requests for more information and additional forms to be filled out,” Jason says. “That’s our value proposition [to physicians]: We will not bug you after you send us the referral. We go to extreme measures to never call that doctor back.” These measures include calling the patient, rather than the doctor, for additional information and ensuring the initial visit between the doctor and the sales rep is as thorough as possible.

Thorough initial visits means Jaosn spends most of his time cultivating and training the company’s sales staff. When he took the reins from his father, DASCO did not have any salespeople.

“We used to just pick up the phone and take whatever we could get,” he says. “I worked on customer service for about a year, and I needed to get out of the office. So, I went out on the road and started making sales calls, and I had some success.” Now, the company employs eight sales representatives and one sales manager.

Being mobile is a big part of Seeley’s sales strategy. “If I could give a sales manager one tip it would be to spend time out on the road with your sales reps,” he says. “Don’t just have lunch with them; go out with them at 8 a.m. and leave with them at 5. Really get to know what life is like for them out on the road.”

Jason prefers to hire young sales reps, fresh out of college and without sales experience, let alone any health care experience, and train them his own way. He says every call at a hospital or doctor’s office, which comprise the majority of DASCO’s referrals, should be different.

“At DASCO, we call it a rut when you go into a doctor’s office and make the same call over and over. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time is the definition of insanity, so we spend a lot of time doing ride-alongs with our sales staff to ensure they are customizing their approaches. It might seem like a lot of training, but it’s really worked out well for us.”

DASCO’s sales staff is paid a fixed dollar amount for CPAP patients, medications and oxygen patients, and the commission is registered on their paycheck at the end of each month. “We pay salespeople to make the fax machine ring,” Jason says. “Once they’ve logged the sale and logged the patient, they can consider themselves paid.”

He notes that unlike most HME businesses that pay sales reps after the patient’s insurance pays the company, which can take months, DASCO’s system pays commission based on a real, more tangible number. “I think earning a commission on something you don’t control is de-motivating for a salesperson,” he says.

With such a heavy focus on respiratory drugs, the Seeleys have tried to position themselves for the reimbursement cuts headed toward the business. But Jason doesn’t want to make himself sick with worry. “We’re just trying to understand how much this will hurt us. We’re not going to change our strategy now because we don’t know enough. We just want to continue down the road we started on.”

JCAHO-accredited since 1989, the business is doing well, and is growing in spite of looming changes, while providing Jason and Rachel Seeley a rewarding career.

“Rachel and I have friends we graduated from college with, and they’re sitting in cubicles all day,” Seeley says. “It’s wonderful to be able to run a business and to have success and give back to the community. We’re young, and we don’t pretend to know all the answers, so we are discovering them together, with our team.”