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Operations

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

  • A Simple Plan

    Our staff often hears from providers who have discovered ways to improve their operations or increase their profits. We rarely hear from any of you that it’s easy to do those things. Lately, in fact, we hear that the paperwork and rules you deal with on a daily basis are making your jobs increasingly harder, requiring complex processes, checks and cross-checks, more staff, more training — and someone just to keep up with all the changes. That’s why the story of Vern and Ella Shafer caught our attention. Veterans of HME, the couple couldn’t wait to open their own company, where they knew they would have to tackle those daily tasks. Yet the Shafers’ common-sense approach to running their small business, complete with all the…
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  • Georgia Reports Computer Problems With Medicaid Payments

    Atlanta Since April 2003, Georgia providers have been filing electronic Medicaid claims based on ANSI standard HIPAA-compliant software. Unfortunately, receiving payment for such claims has been anything but smooth, according to Mike Hamilton, executive director of the Georgia Association of Medical Equipment Services (GAMES). Last month, Phoenix-based consultants FourThought Group reported to the state’s Department of Community Health, which administers Georgia’s Medicaid program, that not all claims were paid correctly and payments were not sent to the correct providers. The state has a contract with Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services to process Medicaid claims. If a percentage of unpaid claims on-hand is significantly higher than paid claims for a given week for a particular provider, state claims processors have sent that provider payments equal to those…
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  • Redefining Rehab: Making a Name for Itself

    Over the last few years, the only thing more elusive than adequate funding for rehabilitation products and services has been an objective and comprehensive definition of rehab. Many profess to know what it is — and what it isn’t. One person’s rehab is another’s consumer power. There seems to be a pervasive attitude that “high-end” rehab is intrinsically better than all the rest. Many people dislike the service delivery model used by providers of non-rehab mobility services and mistakenly denigrate the value of these products and services to clients. Given the funding environment on both the federal and state levels, these issues have polarized the industry and profession, and rightly so. To be sure that we are all speaking the same language, here are two…
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  • The Parable of the Mom & Pop

    If ever the home medical equipment industry needed a modern-day fable of how to succeed in the face of competition and corporate takeovers, now is the time, and the story of Rapid City, S.D.’s Breathe EZ Oxygen and Respiratory Supply is that tale. In the 1980s, Ella Mae Bell and Vern Shafer each launched promising careers in HME, Ella as a customer service representative and respiratory therapist at Shell Medical in Rome, Ga., and Vern as an employee of his sister and brother-in-law’s Pulmonary Services Inc. (PSI) in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, S.D. As they worked, both were promoted to location manager. Ella managed a staff of six for eight years, while Vern’s family business grew large enough to warrant a 6,000-square-foot location. “Like…
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  • Focus on the Competition

    They are everywhere. You meet them in hospital halls, at the community health fair, sitting in the doctor’s office and in the rehab center. They make sure you pick up your phone by the third ring, control your pricing and respond to your customers in a timely manner. They are called your competitors. And, despite talk of competitive bidding and changes in reimbursement, competitors just keep coming. What do you need to know about your competition? Begin by developing an assessment form that allows you to review your competitors and become aware of how they affect your accounts and your business. Sizing Up the Opposition Track as much information about your competitors as you can. For each competitor assessment, include the following: Business Etiquette When…
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  • Enough Already!

    For years, many of HomeCare‘s contributors have called for providers to take advantage of the opportunities that exist in retail. Unfortunately, according to sales guru Louis Feuer, “Most HME dealers seem to find cash a foreign substance. They often have no place to put it or store it, and find those CMNs so much easier to deal with.” Because over-the-counter sales are so unknown to some providers, Shelly Prial often quips that “cash” is not a dirty word. “The transaction is completed when money changes hands. No paperwork, no forms to fill out,” Prial says. The jokes are funny, but they reflect reality. According to our recent Retail Survey (page 22 in this issue), revenues generated from retail sales comprise only about 14 percent of…
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  • The Sweet RING! of Retail

    How does your HME business compare to the industry norm when it comes to retail? To find out, check the following results of HomeCare‘s exclusive Retail Survey to determine the industry’s retailing benchmarks. An accompanying analysis by HME retail expert Jack Evans of Global Media Marketing looks at progress the industry has made in retail since HomeCare last conducted this survey in 2001 (not much, Evans says) and the opportunities that exist (a lot of them, he points out) in what could be (if you approach it correctly) a very lucrative area. A successful and profitable retail showroom for home medical equipment providers is not something that magically appears out of thin air. Rather, it is the result of careful store layout, a thorough understanding…
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  • 10 Merchandising and Design DO’s for Home Care Retail

    The philosophy of designing a contemporary, successful home health care store is based on addres-sing the kind of image that today’s home medical equipment providers want to convey. Stores should communicate caring, warmth, convenience and information — all the things that customers are depending on you to provide. These attributes can be achieved through the effective use of store layout, product variety, decor and, of course, knowledgeable personnel. Using these tools, HME dealers can successfully overcome the “identity crisis,” long associated with home health care products, that comes from consumers’ lack of awareness that these products exist — and the fact that people would rather not have to use them. The challenge for providers is to educate both the patient and the caregiver, and to…
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  • Join HomeCare at Medtrade Spring for : Trading Spaces, HME Style

    Led by Jack Evans and Ed Lemar, two of the industry’s leading retail showroom designers, this special hands-on workshop will teach you how to redesign your own HME showroom. You will see what successful home health retail stores look like and how they: Once you’ve learned about these key components, work with others to “build” a better showroom, and talk with the session leaders about improving your own store. Toss out your old gondolas! Open up your towering shadowed aisles! Learn how to make your showrooms inviting, open spaces that can work to generate sales! Wednesday, March 17 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Medtrade Spring Las Vegas Convention Center Sponsored by HomeCare® “A successful and profitable retail showroom is not something that magically appears out…
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  • Developing a Two-Week Call Plan

    If you’re reading this article and thinking about what sales calls you will be making next week, you’re late. Your planning should have begun several weeks ago. You can plan one or two days in advance, pray that you arrive on time and hope you know what you are going to say. But who can take the chance that all might not go as planned? A two-week call plan program will not only eliminate stress but also ensure successful results. Two weeks is the absolute minimum you should allow for planning the next sales call — a call that may very well be your only opportunity to spend important face-to-face time with a potentially important referral source. It could also be your last if you…
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  • Testing, Testing

    While everyone focused on wheelchairs and Operation Wheeler Dealer in September, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services nonchalantly slipped the
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  • 2004 Forecast

    The turbulent legislative and regulatory issues that sent home medical equipment providers on a screaming roller-coaster ride this year apparently haven’t affected their buying plans. According to the results of HomeCare’s annual reader survey, HME/DME dealers are forging ahead to 2004 with intentions to buy products in a pattern that has changed little over the past several years. Manual wheelchairs remain in the No. 1 spot on providers’ product shopping list, followed by ambulatory aids and nebulizers, bath safety products and beds and mattresses. But for the first time, power wheelchairs broke into the list’s Top 10 territory, reflecting a general increase in consumer awareness of — and demand for — the products that can improve their daily lives. In fact, providers told us they…
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