topic

Operations

Operational guidance for HME and home health businesses, from inventory and logistics to workflow and efficiency.

  • Building a Business Niche by Niche

    Jack Palance had it right. In the 1991 comedy “City Slickers,” Palance slowly leaned over to Billy Crystal and divulged his secret to life: one thing. That may be the secret to business, too, at least for some providers. In the wake of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), HME owners are scrambling to optimize business plans and stay on track for long-term success. According to some industry experts, a good option may well lie in one thing — expanding your business to solve the problems of a specific customer group. In other words, your future could be hiding in one or more of HME’s niche markets. Specialty — or niche — business has a seductive sound, especially as the respiratory and mobility markets, long the…
    Read More →: Building a Business Niche by Niche

  • Taking Your Company’s Viability Temperature

    Given the current and upcoming conditions of our industry, wouldn’t it be nice to take an arbitrary business temperature to see if you’re running a fever or are just fine at 98.6 degrees? Managing a home care operation, whether it is a $1 million mom ‘n’ pop or a multiple-location enterprise, is a little like operating a restaurant. The restaurant and your HME both have good employees and faithful customers who frequently refer others to the business. However, this is where the similarities end. Where the restaurant’s customer is whipping out his cash or credit card to pay his bill while he’s still licking pie crumbs from the plate, you are licking your cash-flow wounds as you stare vacantly at your Medicare ANSI-driven report, asking,…
    Read More →: Taking Your Company’s Viability Temperature

  • Releasing Bottlenecks

    Recently while discussing a problem a provider was having with a workload bottleneck, I was reminded of a scene in the movie “Pearl Harbor.” A nurse sits in a yard outside a hospital as it’s being flooded with wounded. She forces herself past the shock of the situation, and, in an environment that was probably like hell, she walks from stretcher to stretcher with a tube of lipstick making marks on the wounded. She was performing triage. From time to time, we all have to deal with a bottleneck that chokes the workflow in one process and can affect others. But just like patients flooding a hospital, workload bottlenecks must be triaged. Triage breaks the workflow into smaller units of prioritized work and sets up…
    Read More →: Releasing Bottlenecks

  • Groups I and II: What Should You Do?

    The complicated requirements for Group I and II support surfaces claims involve the “KX” modifier, which must be attached to all such claims. When you attach this modifier, you are stating that all the documentation required by Medicare policy is in the patient’s file. All decubitus care items require a Written Order Prior to Delivery (WOPD), a signed and dated order from the physician prior to delivering the item to a patient. If you fail to obtain a WOPD, the claim will be denied. Even if you obtain the WOPD at a later time, your claim will not be reimbursable under Medicare guidelines. As of April 1, 2003, claims for all items requiring a WOPD were deemed “non-appealable claims.” That means if you attach the…
    Read More →: Groups I and II: What Should You Do?

  • Belt-Tightening Times

    “Diet.” “Reimbursement.” The mere mention of either word brings up feelings of dread and frustration, mixed with the promise of great rewards. Don’t ask what made me think about dieting as our staff was putting together the magazine’s annual Reimbursement Survey. I’m on a diet at the moment (I’ve tried them all, from grapefruit to South Beach), and who knows what crazy connections go on in a French fry-deprived head? Maybe the belt-tightening most providers are considering these days made me remember that notching in my own belt is a great incentive for sticking to my current calorie-counting regime. (Well, that and the fact that bathing suit season is fast approaching.) Idle musings aside, I can attest that dieting is no fun. Neither is dealing…
    Read More →: Belt-Tightening Times

  • Power Play

    You can’t keep a good market down. Take the power wheelchair market, for example. It has endured a DMERC policy clarification that stalled thousands of payments for power wheelchairs to home medical equipment providers; it has long grappled with an inadequate Medicare coding system; and it has had to compete with an influx of offshore manufacturers, many of whom undercut both prices and quality. But it’s still one of the best HME markets out there, manufacturers say, and there is nowhere to go but up. “The market has steadily grown because the population continues to [get] older,” says Cy Corrigan, national sales manager for Pride Mobility Products, Exeter, Pa. “Individuals have had their freedom, they’ve seen a lot more than our fathers’ fathers saw in…
    Read More →: Power Play

  • Georgia Payment Problems Ongoing

    Atlanta Soon after Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Systems (ACS) took over HIPAA-compliant electronic processing of Georgia Medicaid claims last year, massive payment processing difficulties ensued — and today the problem still isn’t resolved, according to the Georgia Association of Medical Equipment Services (GAMES). Since last April, Medicaid reimbursements have followed a complicated prospective payment system, said Jason Rogers, GAMES president and vice president of Athens, Ga.-based Care Medical. ACS paid providers a weekly amount based on an average of payments they received during the 12 weeks before April 1, 2003. Earlier this year, the state “stopped paying the prospective payments despite [the fact that current] claim payments were not up [to] previous levels,” Rogers said. He said the state is now withholding half the amount of…
    Read More →: Georgia Payment Problems Ongoing

  • Earning Your Credentials

    I hope that you have read the February and March 2004 issues of HomeCare magazine very carefully. Among a series of articles advising providers on doing business in these changing times, the importance of accreditation is clearly described. Now, I want to play the Devil’s Advocate. Do we need accreditation? The meaning of accreditation is that someone (of authority) has sanctioned or provided credentials or certification that the recipient has met or complied with specific standards. At a Medtrade Spring panel discussion in Las Vegas, several of the industry’s accrediting organizations made presentations re-viewing their individual programs and respective benefits. What is interesting is that all of these programs have one common thread: They show DME/HME dealers ways to run their businesses more efficiently, and…
    Read More →: Earning Your Credentials

  • A Reason to Raise Your Voice

    Civic engagement is the cornerstone of our society. A 20th century politician once said, “there can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.” However, for those of us in the home care industry, our daily lives are consumed with serving our patients’ needs and meeting the payroll for our employees, and the world in Washington seems far removed from these very important tasks. When you add to that the overwhelming perception of power, influence and money in Washington, D.C., it is easy to become ambivalent about your role in democracy and to question your ability to make a difference. I would like to offer another perspective on the HME provider’s role in democracy. Despite the old adage of “politics as usual,” the political landscape in…
    Read More →: A Reason to Raise Your Voice

  • Get Ready, Get Set

    Remember the saying “look to your left, look to your right, one of you …?” Today, that sentence can be finished with “… will be in a competitive bidding area in 2007.” An alternative ending is “… two of you will be in competitive bidding in 2009.” That’s right, one out of three providers in 2007, and two out of three in 2009. A couple of weeks ago the following message was in my e-mail inbox: “I run a smooth HME respiratory business. Dropping around 8 percent to the bottom line. $2.2 million in annual revenue. Does your group have a strategy in the competitive bidding arena?” The address indicated that this forward-thinking provider is located in one of the country’s 10 largest metropolitan statistical…
    Read More →: Get Ready, Get Set

  • The Account Assessment

    Documentation, reporting, tracking — all items on the salesperson’s “I don’t want to do list.” Just getting a salesperson to complete a weekly call report is a challenge for most managers. They just don’t want to do the paperwork! But the need for completing a comprehensive account assessment is vital to understanding your accounts and tracking the progress of these relationships. As you develop each account assessment, include these 10 basic items: Account assessments must be a work in progress, and these items are only the beginning. You should also include other information, such as tracking the payment sources for the services your client provides. These may be the same financial sources you will need to use for payment for your products. Note any new…
    Read More →: The Account Assessment

  • 2004 Reimbursement Survey

    To remain profitable in the new Medicare era — with closer scrutiny of K0011 claims, slowed payment of non-HIPAA-compliant claims (which CMS says soon it won’t accept at all) and coming cuts across a string of bread-and-butter products in 2005 — it’s more important than ever that claims are clean and that reimbursement practices are efficient. To find out where home medical equipment providers stand in denials and appeals, days sales outstanding (DSO), staffing and more, HomeCare fielded the magazine’s annual reimbursement survey — our fifth — to a randomly selected group of domestic subscribers asking about their reimbursement procedures. Providers of all types and sizes responded, and the results of this year’s survey are based on answers from 281 of your peers throughout the…
    Read More →: 2004 Reimbursement Survey

OUR DIGITAL PARTNERS

trending

From Our Partners