Las Vegas
In a meeting of the minds last month at Medtrade Spring,
representatives from some of the home medical equipment industry's
largest manufacturers met with representatives from the industry's
information technology companies to gauge interest in — and
get the ball rolling on — standardization of electronic
ordering of HME.
According to Jerry Knight, president and chief executive officer
of Fidelis Software, Duluth, Ga., the product manufacturers want to
explore the possibilities that would allow their clients —
the nation's HME providers — to place orders from product
vendors' electronic catalogs, using existing internal software
systems.
“This could play out in ways that are as simple as
agreeing on naming conventions,” Knight explained. For
example, today there is no standard, from manufacturer to
manufacturer, for item categories, he said. One manufacturer might
put a walker in a category called “ambulatory aids,”
while another might show it in a specific category called
“walkers.”
Differences also exist in units of measure (how things are
counted and boxed) and in image formats. Standardization in such
areas would allow providers to submit orders online to product
vendors without having to re-enter the data into their internal
systems.
The meeting's facilitator was Bconnected Software, a Broomfield,
Colo.-based firm whose electronic order exchange technology is used
by respiratory services provider Rotech and Rotech's major vendors.
Representatives from Elyria, Ohio-based Invacare, Exeter, Pa.-based
Pride Mobility Products, San Diego-based ResMed; Murrysville,
Pa.-based Respironics; and Longmont, Colo.-based Sunrise Medical
also attended the meeting. “This really is a group effort for
the industry,” said Angie Rees, Bconnected's director of
sales. “An electronic ordering solution is probably in
everyone's future, so it's not a competitive advantage for anybody.
This is about helping the industry lower the cost of doing business
and about making ordering easier for providers.”
Knight pointed to the retail pharmacy industry as one that could
provide an example for the HME industry to follow. The retail
pharmacy industry has standardized product-ordering formats that
allow pharmacies, payors and manufacturers to communicate among
themselves without any question, he said.
“Ultimately, for providers, [electronic standardization]
would mean ease of order entry and the ability to streamline their
own product-procurement methods,” Knight said. “For
software vendors, it would mean that we … could help to
facilitate the workflow process, and to manufacturers, it would
mean there would be some consistency through the industry that
could really open the channels for electronic ordering and
communication. It's a big vision, but the opportunities are
tremendous.”
