Caring Commitment

For Rita Hostak, her role as vice president of government relations at Sunrise Medical is more than just a job. “This is my heart,” she says.

As a fervent patient advocate, Hostak’s commitment to industry affairs has become a way of life. In addition to her day job, the 2005 HomeCaring Award recipient devotes much of her time to spreading the home care message and working to support HME causes.

Two years ago, Hostak played an instrumental role in founding the National Coalition for Rehab and Assistive Technology (NCART), of which she is president. She also is co-chair of the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee (PAOC) — a panel advising CMS on implementing Medicare competitive bidding for DME — and an active participant in the Restore Access to Mobility Partnership (RAMP) and the American Association for Homecare.

Recently, HomeCare talked to Hostak about her involvement with the industry.

HC: How do you have time to do your job and stay active in so many organizations?

Hostak: I’ve been in the industry 23 years, and I fell in love from the very beginning. The vast majority of people I meet are truly dedicated to serving the needs of consumers with disabilities or chronic illnesses, and I love that. It’s such a wonderful industry, but we get bombarded so much with regulatory and legislative policies and procedures that make it very difficult for ethical suppliers to do what they need to do to meet the needs of the consumer. I really care about the consumer, and it drives me to do what I can do to get the obstacles out of the way so that [the industry] can serve them.

You know that struggle between “it’s a job” versus something that really adds value? I tell people I found the perfect career because I get both. There’s a lot of personal satisfaction that comes from this job. You couldn’t pay me enough to work the number of hours that I work.

HC: What is one of the greatest challenges you face?

Hostak: My paying job is for a manufacturer. While in my heart I feel like I’m serving consumers, and in my role at NCART I’m certainly serving suppliers, I’m not a supplier, I’m not a clinician and I’m not a consumer. So my personal opinion is very often irrelevant. In order to be credible and maintain my personal level of ethics, I have to stop myself a lot to say, “What you think doesn’t matter, Rita. You’ve got to stop and listen.”

HC: What impact has NCART had?

Hostak: I have a quote up on my bulletin board from Margaret Mead that says, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” I think NCART is a good example of that. It’s a small group of committed people with a single focus, and it has worked.

When I look back at what I think NCART has accomplished — the message we’ve gotten out there, the work we’ve done on the [high-end rehab equipment] carve-out for competitive bidding, work on different [mobility] code sets, and lots of other issues — I’m very pleased.

HC: Where do you see NCART headed in the future?

Hostak: I look at it as a terrific opportunity to tell people what rehab is and about the people that we serve. It’s also a great opportunity to try to stabilize this market so people aren’t walking around saying, “Let me just go open a hot dog stand; it has to be more fun than this.”

The group of rehab providers working now doesn’t have a huge amount of new blood. You don’t see a lot of 20-year-olds saying, “I want to get into rehab and assistive technology as a career.”

When these [providers] go away, if we haven’t done something to make young people look at this and go, “Wow, that would be an awesome industry. I want to go do that,” this [area of expertise] will die.

Chosen from nominations sent in by readers, HomeCare’s HomeCaring Awards are presented in recognition of distinguished service to the home medical equipment industry. HomeCare is proud to acknowledge the talent, dedication and generous spirit of those who make the HME community a better place, and who demonstrate the caring that HME is all about.