Page 20 - HME Business, October 2017

demonstrate a more minimalist approach. “It doesn’t take a lot of money; it doesn’t take a lot of time,” Baumhover says. “It’s just sitting back and saying, ‘Okay, what can I do here from a product placement, from the right fixture, to the right lighting, or even some signage in the store that can really help direct our customer to where they need to go?’”
OPTIMIZING PROVIDERS
Ty Bello, RCC, president and founder of Team@Work
A practitioner of improved process, Bello says providers need to place a premium
on what he calls Business
Optimization. He breaks it into various parts. “First I look at the team, and
making sure that we have a cohesive, strong, leadership team,” he says. “Everyone on the team understands roles and responsibilities, and has a clear vision for the company.”
The next step Bello says is the overall health
of the organization. Providers must look at their human assets and ask themselves, “How are we at the business?” he explains. “Do we have good people on our team? Do we have those people
in the right role, with the right level of responsi- bility? Are we growing as an organization and as a team? And I don’t mean just in size. I mean, are we working more functional as a team?
After that, providers need to engage in some strategic planning. “We need to look at our busi- ness, historically,” Bello says. “We need to look at all of our sales financially, how we’ve done in the past. We need to compare it to today, and we need to do a profitability analysis by product.
“Once we lay the landscape of what product we have, our most profitable for us ... we need
to take a look at where is that product at in our marketplace, and do we possess market share or not? ... From there, we can go from marketing strategy that brings our product out there. This is the final stage: We need to have metrics in place that say whether or not we are successful.
When providers do those things in earnest, Bello says “this will change the landscape for every HME business out there.”
UNTANGLING MEDICARE’S RED TAPE
Georgie Blackburn, vice president of government relations and legislative affairs for BLACKBURN’S
As someone who has spent the lion’s share of
her HME career in industry advocacy, Blackburn advises providers to monitor the Ways and Means Committee’s Medicare Red Tape Relief Project (bit.ly/2x7llA0), a far reaching effort to reduce “unnecessary and burden-
some regulation” that was kicked off earlier this summer.
“It’s the first time, any major committee has not taken one of our issues, but the whole climate of our industry, and the regulatory burdens we’re under and the things that don’t make sense for the patients we serve, in an investigative way,” Blackburn explains.
And where the industry is concerned, both the American Association for Homecare and the National Coalition for Assistive and Rehab Technology have state the industry case when it comes to Medicare’s regulatory burdens.
“The summaries that went in from NCART and AAHomecare were very clear how this small, but important portion of the Medicare budget helps to reduce the federal spending has to be looked at,” she notes “... I think we’re at a good start right now. We have started the dialog.
18 HMEBusiness | October 2017 | hme-business.com
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