Page 23 - HMEB Business, February 2017

“Improved patient outcomes are, of course, key elements of a successful, modern sleep business,” said Jon Yerbury, Vice President, Marketing, Americas, ResMed. “But so too is the efficient management of resources within HME providers that enables them to provide better patient care and the ability to take on even more patients. Remote patient monitoring saves HMEs significant time and labor, enabling them to focus on increasing refer- rals a nd servicing more patients while providing the same quality of care. In a 2015 report, Berg Insight reported that remote monitoring is growing faster in the sleep therapy segment than in any other healthcare market. The report projected that in 2016, sleep will surpass remote cardiac rhythm monitoring, which has traditionally been the largest market segment.”
Sleep therapy provider Gary Sheehan, President and CEO, Cape Medical Supply, Inc., an HME provider considered a sleep therapy pioneer, said his company’s growth is “moderating,” but sleep therapy offers opportunities for providers. Two of the biggest challenges Sheehan sees are rules and regulations, which he said are impeding growth.
“Utilization management organizations are creating time delays and Medicare’s audits have long since left the realm of reasonableness,” said Sheehan. “The government needs to get back to focusing on if there was
a clinical need, was the product delivered and is the patient using and benefiting from it. They have us chasing our tails for information and the physician and lab communities are growing increasingly frustrated by all that we are asking from them to simply get patients set up. It’s not a good situation and we fail to understand who benefits from the environment they are creating. It’s certainly not patient-centric and doesn’t support quality outcomes in a timely fashion.”
With all these difficulties of maintaining a sleep business considered, a sleep therapy provider must have exemplary company systems to overcome these challenges in order to maintain and grow patient referrals, which are the lifeblood of the sleep therapy business.
“There are many ways to grow the sleep business — d irect marketing to sleep labs being the most important,” said Robyn Parrott, RRT, President, Sleep Solutions Home Medical. “We incorporate social media, emails and patient educational programs. Overall, 90% of our business comes from referrals.”
Sheehan agreed with the importance of referrals: “Absolutely, referrals are the only way to grow a sleep business.”
WHY REFERRAL DEVELOPMENT REMAINS SO CRUCIAL
Sleep Review’s first quarter 2016 sleep center survey results (bit.ly/2itlRQS) indicate that sleep patient volume growth and per patient revenue are growing, although not at the same clip as indicated in their last survey.
For example, the survey said that over the last 12 months of the Q1 2016 survey, average beds per respondent decreased slightly by 1 percent to 7.7 beds, but over the next 12 months, average beds per respondent are expected to increase by 5 percent to 8.1 beds. Regarding patient growth, respondents reported a patient volume growth of 6 percent over the last 12 months and expect a 6 percent growth over the next 12 months. These patient growth figures show a slow down from 8 percent growth (over the last 12 months) and 9 percent growth (over the next 12 months), according to the Sleep Center’s last survey, released in third quarter 2015.
Yerbury said these recent findings demonstrate that the sleep busi-
ness is growing as it taps further into the undiagnosed patient population. Educated sleep patients and the technology to diagnose and treat sleep issues are creating more patient volume and thus the race for more referrals.
“There is broad awareness of sleep apnea and its impact on patients health and community well being, and physicians and other healthcare decision makers across the care continuum continue to screen for it and refer in for diagnostics where appropriate,” Sheehan said. “It’s still a growing market, but not to the same degree it was a decade ago when awareness was just beginning to come about. There is an opportunity for providers who can work in a complex regulatory and reimbursement provider and can put together a program that is closely monitored and delivers strong outcomes for patients and healthcare professionals.
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“There are innumerable barriers put in place by payers and it is increas- ingly difficult to provide the right level of service and care to patients, in a timely fashion,” he continues. “If you can construct a program, wrap a lot of data around it, drive reporting to deliver visibility and stay on top of it as it scales, it’s still a good line of business to be in. It’s not a place to dabble and we still see providers who lack scale and sophistication trying to win share and that creates a lot of bad outcomes for patients and a black eye for an industry that can’t afford it.”
PERSPECTIVES ON DRIVING MORE REFERRALS
There are a variety of ways that providers can increase their stream of refer- rals. To help sleep therapy providers capture referrals to grow their busi- ness, HME Business tapped industry leaders, who in their own words offer the following top tips for growing a sleep therapy patient referral base.
GARY SHEEHAN, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF CAPE MEDICAL SUPPLY INC.
“Sleep therapy providers must have a strong direct sales force that is
in the field talking about the strengths of your program and working collaboratively with your healthcare partners to drive compliant refer- rals,” Sheehan says. “There is a lot of education that goes into generating clean referrals and working to get patients set up timely given the overall regulatory environment.
“Also, you need to be able to explain how you do what you do and discuss the outcomes that doing it that way creates,” he continues. “Through-putting compliant patients is the primary goal from a clinical and business perspective — you need a process built to do that and a team capable of communicating that to the referral population to drive preference, traction and growth.
Sheehan adds that reporting is critical.
“We have an extraordinarily detailed reporting infrastructure and can demonstrate to our partners compliance rates based on the RT that performed the setup, the mask used, the payer, etc.,” he explains. “This gives our partners confidence that their patients are with a high-quality provider who has a depth of knowledge in the business line.
“Again, this is a highly complex business space and we continue to see too many providers in it who don’t belong here — it’s not good for patients health outcomes or the industry as a whole and I think some network narrowing will likely be coming soon, particularly given the fact that there is so much information available on outcomes and so much clinical utiliza- tion data at our fingertips and at the payers’ fingertips,” he adds. “We
make a meaningful investment to drive compliance and are very proud of our program and the results it creates. We win new business, very simply, because we are better managers of our patients and their health outcomes than the providers we compete with.”
This improves referral relationships, Sheehan adds. A provider’s partners must know that it has its practice in order, and an effective way to accom- plish that is to use technology to measure and monitor each business step and the infrastructure to make changes, he explains.
“Providers have to understand their sleep therapy practice from end to end and have visibility into performance from the moment a referral hits their system through when a patient is actively reordering supplies,” he says. “What are your cycle times, throughputs, bottlenecks and volume
“Sleep therapy providers must have
a strong direct sales force that is in the field talking about the strengths of your program and working collaboratively with your healthcare partners to drive compliant referrals.” — Gary Sheehan, Cape Medical Supply Inc.
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