Looking for ‘Next Steps’ at Medtrade Spring

LAS VEGAS—Innovation will be alive and well in Las Vegas
as Medtrade Spring opens its doors tomorrow through Thursday (May
11-13) at the Sands Expo & Convention Center. And while
attendees will be walking the aisles looking for the products they
believe can succeed in changing the HME marketplace, several will
also be bringing their own bright ideas.

Andy Simmons Jr. will be attending the show as an HME
provider—and also as an exhibitor. As vice president of field
operations for Cornerstone Medical with nine locations in Georgia,
Alabama and Florida, Simmons has been going to Medtrade Spring for
at least 15 years. “We are big fans of the education process;
we know there is a lot out there information-wise for us to learn,
and this show provides a platform,” he said. “We go out
and meet all the vendors, look at new services and consider ways to
make our company more efficient and profitable.”

Many HME providers will come to the show seeking tools to position
themselves for competitive bidding, said Simmons. The industry is
changing, and providers will be looking to change, too. “Look
at us; we have been in the industry for over 22 years and we have
to change, to do something different than we have been
doing,” he said.

For Simmons and his father Andrew Simmons, change has come with the
launch of a new company, PAP Supply, that subcontracts with home
care companies to replenish supplies for their PAP customers. PAP
Supply communicates on behalf of the provider through
person-to-patient calls to help increase compliance and fulfill
ongoing supply needs. “We do it on behalf of the HME
provider, as their representative,” said Simmons. “This
is not automated, this is a real person making the call.

“We had been doing this for ourselves for a couple of years,
and we saw it was a good model we could roll out to other
providers,” Simmons added. “We developed the process
and software program. It’s a ‘win-win’ for patients and the home
care companies.

“We can also relay any additional issues the customer might
be having back to the provider,” Simmons said. “The
unique thing is that since we developed this for our own company
… we understand the care of patients, so when we are talking
to a company’s customers we have the knowledge and expertise
to troubleshoot a number of issues over the phone, but at a minimum
we can forward the call on for attention, which saves time and
creates efficiencies.”

In addition, he continued, “Once supply orders are approved,
we ship all the supplies from our location, so there is no need for
the provider to keep an inventory. The provider bills the clients
and pays us a fee for our service.”

According to Andrew Simmons, “With the challenges we are
facing in this environment with the economy and CMS, people are
looking for ways to capture some lost revenues, and they are
looking at areas they haven’t developed. One of those is in
the sleep area, where you have patients who need to have their
supplies replaced on a regular basis. There are opportunities there
for providing better care for patients and helping to keep them in
compliance, and for developing the revenues that can be achieved
through that process.”

But it’s a complex matter “to navigate through all of
the issues in doing that,” said Andy Simmons. “It can
be challenging for a home care company to be able to staff this
specific niche. Often personnel are doing multiple things, and this
is one of those areas that can get pushed to the side … when
companies outsource to us, we manage the whole process. We will
mine the existing revenue that a company already has within their
doors and capitalize on that piece that they may not have been able
to capture properly. This can put sales and revenues on the table
that weren’t there before.”

That’s exactly what provider Cliff Woolard hopes to do as
well. When Woolard, president and CEO of Home Med-Equip Co.,
Concord, Calif., didn’t see what he needed in the
marketplace, he created it himself. Four years ago he began to look
for an electronic means to communicate with his sales staff. He
tried several out-of-the-box solutions, he said, but nothing met
his needs. So he developed PowersalesCRM.com, a Web portal geared
toward managing outside sales staff.

“It started out as something we were using internally and has
evolved into something we feel is applicable to almost any industry
that has customers and outside salespeople,” said Woolard,
who is now offering the sales management tool to other HME
companies on a monthly subscription basis.

PowersalesCRM.com uses a provider’s client list to populate an
online system to guide and motivate outside sales reps to keep
their focus and work smarter in day-to-day activities. The system
provides an ongoing goals-based to-do list and prompts salespeople
to accomplish tasks at certain times with reminders if those tasks
are overdue. The system can be used with a smart phone or
Blackberry and keeps up with expenses, appointments and actual
calls made. On the management side, the system generates
statistical ratios and other business information for insight into
sales productivity.

The new tool is “one of the ways we are diversifying our
business,” said Woolard. “It certainly fulfilled my
need for more perspective on the activities of our sales
team.”

Woolard, who has been attending Medtrade events for nine years,
estimates he spends about 30 percent of his time in sessions and
about 70 percent on the show floor. “I go for fellowship, a
chance to talk to people, to recharge batteries, to get a different
perspective, whether from consultants or other providers,” he
said. “It’s an important time for me. This year, I’m going
for the entire week … A lot of time is spent brainstorming on
the next steps. It’s a nice, uninterrupted time that helps you
focus on what you need to do in your business.”

Stephen Lueckenhoff will also be attending Medtrade Spring to
connect with both attendees and exhibitors. As a budding
entrepreneur, he’s looking for feedback on a product idea
that evolved from his background in respiratory therapy.

Lueckenhoff pointed out that a typical patient on continuous home
oxygen has 50 feet of tubing connected to the oxygen concentrator,
which can be both an annoyance and a fall hazard, especially for
someone who is unstable or uses a walker. It’s easy to trip over
tubing and fall, and patients typically have to “throw the
tubing” to keep it out of their way. The owner of Inspyrd
Products Corp., Albuquerque, N.M., Lueckenhoff believes he has a
solution in his new product called Tube-B-Gone (patent pending), a
remote-controlled oxygen tubing system that keeps excess tubing out
of the way.

Lueckenhoff previously spent 20 years as a branch manager for
Homedco and American HomePatient. He thinks Tube-B-Gone could be a
significant revenue generator for an HME provider. “Based on
my research with beta sites, my patients really value this
product,” he said. “It could be a good cash sale or
rental item [for an HME provider]. A lot of caregivers and family
members would be willing to pay an out-of-pocket expense to keep
their loved ones safer at home.”