Parachute Health White Paper Calls for Industry-Wide Collaboration

NEW YORK—Parachute Health has released a white paper arguing that greater collaboration can help home medical equipment (HME) organizations overcome fragmented systems, reduce administrative complexity and improve the delivery of patient care.

In “A Vision for a More Connected Future of HME,” Parachute examines the growing need to modernize healthcare infrastructure as rising demand, mounting cost pressures and advances in digital technology reshape the industry. With more than 61 million Americans age 65 or older and the growing U.S. home durable medical equipment market, the paper highlights an industry poised to grow in both size and importance to the U.S. healthcare system, creating greater urgency for more efficient, coordinated processes.

Despite growing investment in healthcare technology, HME orders still move across disconnected systems and organizations, requiring clinicians, HME providers and health plans to rely on manual follow-up and repeated documentation. The paper argues that modernizing HME requires more than automating existing, disconnected workflows. It calls for a more connected, transparent infrastructure that enables information to move across organizations and supports greater collaboration throughout the HME transaction.

“The healthcare industry has spent years working toward greater interoperability, but HME remains one of the areas where disconnected workflows create unnecessary complexity,” said David Gelbard, founder and CEO of Parachute Health. “We’re at a point where technology can do much more than automate faxes and phone calls. It can help clinicians, HME providers and health plans work from better information, reduce administrative friction and make quality a more meaningful part of how the industry operates.”

Parachute outlines an industry-wide approach centered on three priorities:

• Connect the full HME transaction: Move beyond standalone digital ordering tools to improve coordination across prescription, HME provider intake, authorization, fulfillment and ongoing health plans communication.
• Make quality and performance more visible: Give clinicians, HME providers and health plans better information to understand order status, identify bottlenecks and recognize HME provider performance beyond price alone.
• Build infrastructure that supports collaboration: Enable information to move across organizations while preserving each participant’s responsibility for clinical decisions, fulfillment, coverage and network management.