I Hope This Isn’t My Final Answer

There may be no dumb questions, as the saying goes, but lately I’ve had to give some pretty dumb answers.

The HomeCare staff regularly fields questions from all sorts of people interested in HME. Researchers in one sector or another often call in for industry facts and figures (see our July 2005 issue, I tell them) or the number of suppliers (according to the National Supplier Clearinghouse, there were 115,181 active numbers as of May 1).

Foreign companies, watching our country’s aging baby boomers, want to know how to get their piece of the American pie. “Get in line,” I quip. Students ask if they’ll make any money in choosing a home health career. “We can all hope,” I say.

Analysts query on trends and projections, and executives ask where we see market growth. “In virtually every equipment and service category,” I respond. How can I lower my DSO, managers wonder? “Strengthen your intake procedures and make sure your claims are clean,” I advise. Should I sell my business now, providers ask? Actually, I defer whenever this comes up because it’s an agonizing toughy only the owner himself can answer.

One of the more intriguing questions I have received came last winter from a provider in Paintsville — the Kentucky town that hit the headlines when its multitude of elderly scooter drivers was reported to be causing traffic jams — asking whether I thought it was a good time for him to enter the oxygen business. Despite what were then impending reimbursement cuts, I answered that one with a resounding “Yes!” Any business with such success in scooter sales could surely devise a winning oxygen strategy, I reasoned. Of course I added my usual caveat: “discounting any future government action that could change the situation.”

As the clock ticks toward 2007, however, many of our questions are from providers just checking to make sure they haven’t missed anything. And what has now become my standard answer to their three most common questions is, as you will see, not especially helpful.

“Who will the HME accreditors be?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are the 10 cities where competitive bidding will begin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Which products will be on the Medicare bid list?”

“I don’t know.”

After assuring the callers and letter-writers and e-mailers that the government simply hasn’t released this information, at least as this issue goes to press, the next question is invariably, “How do they expect me to plan for my business without this information?”

And to that, I answer, “As you always have, with your patients’ best interests in mind — and, until all of us understand exactly how this industry’s new scenario will unfold, with as many Plan Bs as you can muster.”