Author

Shelly Prial

  • CMS/Medicare

    Up, Up and Away

    With great consternation, I read the following recently: “Medicare spends $600,000 to advertise on a blimp.” Oh, yes! The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is advertising the Medicare program on a blimp that flies at sporting events. According to CMS Administrator Tom Scully, the average senior has no clue what his or her Medicare benefits are. What a blanket denunciation about a major segment of our population. Nevertheless, CMS has budgeted $30 million for advertising to promote the program to its 40 million participants. How many benefits for ailing and needy seniors will be denied just to be able to cover the $30 million spent to advertise Medicare benefits on a blimp at a football game? Thirty million here, $30 million there — and...

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  • Aging in Place

    Tracking the Telemonitoring Trend

    I recently attended the Remote Telemonitoring and Home Telehealth Forum sponsored by the American Telemedicine Association. There was “standing room only.” I am not sure if our end of the health care industry has yet grasped the importance of telemedicine and how it can dramatically affect the way health care services will be provided and monitored in the future. Telemedicine is best described as the ability to monitor a patient using the latest tools available electronically. This means that pertinent information can be available to medical practitioners without the patient’s being physically present — and without sending a person to obtain the patient’s data. The result is two-fold: reduced costs and improved care. What I learned at the ATA conference was the “how” of telemedicine....

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  • Software

    Battling Lethargy

    Apathetic, these all are terms that describe lethargy. When I look at many dealers from my ivory tower in Florida, I see another definition for lethargy.

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  • Band-Aids and Iodine

    Perfecting the Art of the Add-On Sale What is an add-on sale? When I took my first job as a pharmacist, the owner of the pharmacy told me the following:

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  • Doing What’s Best

    I suppose that one of the things we must learn to live with is politics. That means we also have to learn about politicians. What is a politician? Webster's

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  • Opportunities in OTC

    What should the average dealer do if national competitive bidding for durable medical equipment becomes a reality? There are many opportunities available

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  • Operations

    Where’s the Money?

    The federal government has been obliged to budget money (a great deal of money) to cover some rather pressing issues — issues that make up a major part of the news we all read daily. My concern is what will happen to health care, in particular to home medical equipment providers and home health agencies? Where is the money going to come from to allow normal services to continue? If the pressure that is being put on this industry to save dollars continues, health care in the United States will be reduced to the lowest common denominator. The continual decreases in reimbursements are leading many manufacturers to move their operations to foreign lands and putting smaller HME dealers out of business. Unemployment benefits and the...

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  • Operations

    You Should Be Committed

    It always rewards me to hear from home medical equipment providers — the conversations are great. These entrepreneurs are always filled with unique ideas about ways they plan to improve their businesses and increase their profits. They tell me how they will remodel and change their showrooms. I applaud their efforts and always encourage these providers to follow through on their ideas. But, when I ask the same providers a few weeks later how they are progressing with their plans, too often I hear something like this: “Well, Shelly, you know how busy we are and I just never got around to it.” This does not sit well with me. Why? These providers did not make a commitment to themselves to follow through on good...

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  • Luck or Pluck?

    American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The home medical equipment industry

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  • Software

    Straight Talk

    To mark its 25th anniversary, HomeCare magazine honored six individuals who have provided distinguished service to the home medical equipment industry.

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