Echoes of Times Gone By

30 years ago

In what may seem an eerily familiar echo of recent events, 30 years ago September saw HME amid Senate Subcommittee on Small Business hearings to assess “the impact on small business of the Health Care Financing Administration regulation and policy.”

The reasons? Specifically, in the words of Paul Kraemer, then president of the Association of Independent Medical Equipment Suppliers, “The Medicare Bureau, over the past couple of years, has regulated the DME industry in stifling proportions, claiming abuse by the industry of the Medicare program.

“It is our contention that it is the bureau which has done the real abusing of its power. The abuse includes: the willful price-setting practice which totally ignores the marketplace; the requests for refunds of thousands of dollars and the denials of properly prepared claims due to ‘after the fact’ regulations; the denial of oxygen claims due to arbitrarily set and unpublished parameters; and the failure to write regulations for reasonable delivery charges in a time when costs climb to the sky.”

20 years ago

September’s HomeCare packed a 1-2-3 punch in 1988 with its coverage on political action committees (PACs), a study by McKesson and a feature on the state of home oxygen.

HME was taking baby steps into the PAC arena, with the National Association of Medical Equipment Suppliers (NAMES) making a $20,312 contribution between 1987 and 1988. Additionally, the Health Industry Manufacturers Association (HIMA) had been contributing to PACs since 1979, giving $18,000 between 1987 and 1988. Industry lobbyist Patrick Cacchione, then NAMES director of regulatory affairs, summed up HME’s interest in PACs: “For groups like us, all a PAC can do is buy access.”

The “McKesson Digest” included a thorough analysis of the HME industry. Among its findings: Oxygen and total parenteral nutrition dealers showed the highest profit margins; hospital-based HMEs reported the lowest.

In “The Changing Face of Oxygen,” HomeCare explored the status of home oxygen with regard to prices, supply and demand and the Six-Point Plan. At the time, conserving devices were at the forefront of HME technology. As Michael Luttrell, John Bunn Co. VP noted, “The whole issue of conservation is ascending, where a couple of years ago it was a dirty word. Now it is becoming an economic necessity.”

10 years ago

The magazine’s buzz in September 1998 was all about sleep therapy. “The potential is incredible,” Dennis Fitzgerald, then director of sales for AirSep Corp., told HomeCare. “We got into the sleep therapy market because of the staggering numbers. There’s enough room in the market that even a piece of the business can be significant for a small company.”

At the time, growing awareness of OSA elevated talk of home sleep testing, but despite NCD approval for HST in March this year, the DME MACs may prohibit HME providers from being involved. (For more, see “Market Analysis” on page 22.)