News in Brief from Medtrade Spring

LAS VEGAS — Nearly 5,000 HME professionals met in Las
Vegas at Medtrade Spring, held May 11 — 13 at the Sands Expo
and Convention Center. In addition to a show floor busy with 300
exhibitors, conference sessions were buzzing with attendees eager
to hear the latest on legislative and regulatory activity, best
business practices and new models that can withstand the industry’s
monumental changes. Here’s what a few of them had to say about
what’s coming.

On Growing Retail Business
“Right now given the circumstances that we’re in with Medicare, I
believe that if you can grow your retail business you can begin to
look at other avenues of revenue that you’ve never even thought of
before, getting into things like health and wellness or women’s
care and items like that. Look at all the businesses that do
nothing but retail and are so successful … If you have a
business or a building standing somewhere, why not take a section
of that or a corner of that and convert it into retail?”

— B.J. Bowser, vice president, medical
equipment division, Sunshine Pharmacy, Naples, Fla.

“What we’re going to see is that Medicare is only going to pay
base level, and we’re going to be selling a lot of items for cash.
That’s where we’re going.”

— Jeff Baird, chairman, Health Care
Group, Brown & Fortunato, Amarillo, Texas

On a Good Defense
“Documentation is the most important — and, quite frankly,
the only — defense providers have in an audit. Providers will
always say that their documentation is excellent when in reality
it’s not. It’s unfortunate because it’s something they are relying
on someone else to do. They rely on their physicians, and that’s
where the documentation is lacking.”

— Wayne van Halem, president, The van
Halem Group, Atlanta

On the Industry’s Curse
“Competitive bidding is the curse of the HME industry. People
should recognize it is the curse of health care in general. We
don’t need it. We compete every day with our competitors on getting
the products and services out that we do. A bigger scare to me is
what’s happening with insurance companies in the states. In
Minnesota, BCBS is doing a pilot project with one national company
… That’s very scary. And, we could have competitive bidding
statewide that will be similar to national [bidding], and that’s
what’s keeping me awake at night.”

— Carol Laumer, executive director, Rice
Home Medical, Willmar, Minn.

On Pounding Away for H.R. 3790
“We are in crunch time right now. It’s a terrific thing that we’ve
got support in the House and that’s a great accomplishment. We’ve
got the ball but we’re not across the goal line and we’ve really
got to finish this thing off. The key is to get a Senate companion
bill, and that’s going to be a tough lift … The bottom line
is that everybody’s got to get out there and pound away and pound
away to get as many House members signed on as we can. The game is
now, and everybody needs to get in it.”

— Tom Ryan, president and CEO, Homecare
Concepts, Farmingdale, N.Y.

On Absolute Bare Bones Costs
“The market is getting to be very sophisticated now, so as a result
we are seeing more of the really good providers doing value chains
analysis — where they look all their costs from the time they
get a referral to when they actually deliver the product —
looking for ways to eliminate certain cost structures. Those that
are going to be successful are those that are going to be able to
drive their costs down to absolute bare bones. That’s really what’s
going to be important, because revenues are decreasing on a
year-to-year basis and costs are continuing to increase. You’ve got
to find new delivery models and new ways to make money in this
tough economic climate. Somebody’s going to do it because patients
are not going away.”

— Tom Williams, managing director,
Strategic Dynamics, Scottsdale, Ariz.

On Becoming a New Provider
“We looked at the statistics surrounding the aging baby boomers and
saw that there would be a huge demand on the market and allow for
competition to come in on the home medical equipment side … A
lot of people have asked us why we are doing this with all the
pricing issues, cuts in Medicare and so forth. The thing is, the
population is aging. If anything, I really believe it will offer a
greater opportunity because even if Medicare gets cut, the patients
still need the equipment. I think it will open more doors for
us.”

— Tim Goodman, owner, A2Z DME,
Jeffersonville, Ind.

On Figuring It All Out
“The market in itself is confused. Nobody knows what is going on. I
cannot find a straight answer. I can’t give a straight answer. My
crystal ball is broken. Nobody knows where to go. There is no way
to plan. It is the consensus of everybody you talk to.”

— Larry Rice, general manager, The
Wheelchair Shop, Houston

On Telling the HME Story Better
“We really haven’t done a good job of saying that [home care] is
the preferred alternative for the beneficiary and that the family
feels better about it. No one says, ‘I can’t wait to get mom or dad
into a nursing home,’ and no one says ‘I can’t wait to move into a
nursing home,’ so we’ve done a less-than-effective job of telling
that part of the story … We spend a lot of time talking about
what’s not being done right, like how hard it is to work through
the bureaucracy at CMS and the documentation issues … and we
really don’t spend enough time talking about the beneficiaries and
what their alternatives are and how we make a difference
there.”

— Mike Pfister, executive vice president
of external relations and government affairs, The Scooter Store,
New Braunfels, Texas

In other news from the show, winners of the New Product Pavilion
awards, based on attendee votes, were:

• Innovation Award: Bedrailopoly bed rail,
  Stander, Logan, Utah;
• Merit Award: Sur-Step cane stability tip,
  Tru-Motion Dynamics, Orem, Utah; and
• Providers Choice: FullLife face mask, Philips
  Respironics, Murrysville, Pa.

The Best Booth Award was presented to Infopia USA for its
“Carnival of Innovation,” which featured an acrobat, magician and
“the world’s largest mind-reading rabbit.” According to company
officials, the theme was inspired by Infopia’s Eocene Remote Home
Patient Monitoring System and providers’ need to distinguish their
companies from competitors.

A crowd of more than 450 stopped in for
AAHomecare’s “Washington Update,” where association President
Tyler Wilson and Vice President of Government Affairs Walt Gorski
urged providers to consider lobbying a part of their day-to-day
business practices.

During the show, the association elected six at-large directors
including: Rob Brant, general manager of City Medical Services,
North Miami Beach, Fla.; Randy Wolfe, president of Lambert’s Health
Care, Knoxville, Tenn.; Dave McCausland, senior vice president for
planning and government affairs, The ROHO Group, Belleville, Ill.;
Jackie Bolt, president and CEO of Carolina Homecare, Greenville,
S.C.; Bill Elliott, president and CEO of The MED Group, Lubbock,
Texas; and Tim Pederson, CEO of WestMed Rehab, Rapid City, S.D.

A.J. Filippis, president and CEO of Wright & Filippis,
Rochester Hills, Mich., was elected chair of the association. Joel
Marx, CEO of Medical Service Co., Cleveland, was elected vice
chair, and Scott Meuser, chairman and CEO of Pride Mobility
Products, Exeter, Pa., was elected secretary.