Software
What’s going on with e-CMNs
Electronic document exchange (EDE), including the electronic certificate of medical necessity, or e-CMN, has been inching through the HME pipeline for several years.
Author
Paula Patch
-
-
Software
Plugging into HME IT
What’s the One Product that can help you control your future? Your computer. -
Software
Decisions, Decisions: Choosing IT and IT Vendors
While it’s clear that information technology can improve the operations of any HME, the challenge is figuring out how to begin and where to spend your money. -
Operations
Quality Counts
When it comes to being successful in the manual wheelchair market, quality is “job one,” to borrow a quote from Ford Motor Co. The quality of products affects the market’s sales, innovations, reimbursement structure — and reputation. Providers should not “chase low-cost products specifically for the sake of money. If they do, they are [providing a disservice to the disabled community] along with creating a more-difficult [reimbursement] environment, which costs society more in the long run,” says John Box, president of Colours in Motion. A Mature Market Why does high quality count for so much in this particular market? Perhaps because there are many opportunities for low-quality products to make it to end-users. “The manual wheelchair market is a mature market that is increasingly becoming... -
Operations
Banking on the Status Quo
The seating and positioning market is … pick one: growing, slowing, both, neither. Perhaps more than any other market in the durable medical equipment industry, the prognosis for the health of the seating and positioning market most closely mirrors that for the entire industry. On one hand, growth factors for DME and seating and positioning are in plain view. The population of potential end users is booming, manufacturers are introducing better and more cost-effective products and the federal government has authorized several long-awaited improvements, including new, more specific HCPCS codes for many seating and positioning products. “The marketplace for all DME products is growing tremendously,” says Steve Schlegel, product manager for seating and positioning for Invacare. “Looking at the exceptionally large population of people getting... -
HME Products
Beyond the Test Strip
In the movie The Graduate, main character Benjamin gets a bit of advice on the industry of the future — “Plastics.” If Benjamin were a home medical equipment provider in early 2004, the response would be completely different: “Blood glucose meters,” HME experts would say. “Lancets and test strips. Footwear, skincare and sugar-free medicines.” In short, diabetes is big business, and, sadly for the American population, the market is expected to grow. Big Numbers As of 2002, more than 17 million Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes — an increase of 61 percent since 1991 — and that number is expected to double by 2050, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 5.9 million Americans... -
On a Roll
Mobility gives something that most people take for granted: the ability to live life with dignity and independence. In an ideal world, that's a gift no -
Operations
The Parable of the Mom & Pop
If ever the home medical equipment industry needed a modern-day fable of how to succeed in the face of competition and corporate takeovers, now is the time, and the story of Rapid City, S.D.’s Breathe EZ Oxygen and Respiratory Supply is that tale. In the 1980s, Ella Mae Bell and Vern Shafer each launched promising careers in HME, Ella as a customer service representative and respiratory therapist at Shell Medical in Rome, Ga., and Vern as an employee of his sister and brother-in-law’s Pulmonary Services Inc. (PSI) in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, S.D. As they worked, both were promoted to location manager. Ella managed a staff of six for eight years, while Vern’s family business grew large enough to warrant a 6,000-square-foot location. “Like... -
HME Products
Cool Show, Hot Topic
How many technicians does it take to transform an ordinary Mercedes sport utility vehicle into a handicap-accessible street rod? Try five — and in seven days, with a $3,000 budget. At least, that’s the case when the transformation occurs on The Discovery Channel’s hit program Monster Garage. Headed by Jesse James, a custom motorcycle builder and designer and owner of West Coast Choppers in Long Beach, Calif., the crew included Warren Chalker, a welder and engineer with Lancaster, Calif.-based standing-device manufacturer Prime Engineering; Scott Deacon, president of La Canada, Calif.-based vehicle-modification company Advanced Mobility; Mike Montenegro, automotive designer and owner of Hesperia, Calif.-based Montenegro Designs; Ray Paprota, a paraplegic NASCAR Craftsmen Truck driver from Birmingham, Ala.; and Ed Sandoz, a quadriplegic mechanical engineer from Upton,... -
The Great Outdoors
By the time you read this, Jeff Pagels may already have climbed by way of a specially adapted hand-propelled, three-wheeled mountain bike Mt. Kilimanjaro,