Page 39 - HME Business, October 2017

physical therapists, etc.
• Understand compression because it can go hand-in-hand with
mastectomy patients.
• Be innovative in your marketing. Understand what makes you special
and use that to promote yourself. For example, when bedside with patients, we have created letters for them that let them know we are here to answer all their questions. We have also done business cards with surgeons and attached a special coin about the cancer patient’s journey and passed them out at numerous events.
MASTECTOMY PATIENT CHALLENGES
Neel says HME providers will experience challenges when becoming a post-mastectomy provider. Fewer and fewer items are being covered by insurance, coverage is being reduced, deductibles are going up, and health insurance companies are confused how to account for mastectomy supplies. For the patient, they are affected by the lack of coverage, along with rising deductibles and copayments.
“As a provider, we see more and more that health insurance companies are determining the medical necessity of their customers instead of the physicians, who are actually holding face-to-face office visits,” she says. “This, coupled with arcane reimbursement requirements for us as providers, makes this an industry not for the faint of heart. An example is the annual review of a physician face-to-face appointment to confirm loss of breast.”
But what makes it all worth it? Neel says that this patient base is an amazing network of strong, spirited women — and men. She pointed out that one out of every 400 men are diagnosed with breast cancer each year.
For Jensen, she says the biggest challenge is getting the patient in to see the mastectomy fitter before they have surgery.
“There is a tremendous benefit to the patient experience when they visit the mastectomy fitter and have a better idea of what products are available to make them more comfortable immediately following surgery,” she says. “The No. 1 frustration we hear from mastectomy fitters is when patients say, ‘I wish I would have known about you six months ago when I had my surgery.’ To help facilitate the communication, Essentially Women created a brochure called ‘Shades of Pink’ that can be branded by the supplier to help patients understand the local resources available.”
As mentioned earlier, two of Magennis’s Figleaf boutiques get patients to the fitter prior to surgery by operating inside an oncology center on a hospital campus.
“A huge piece of what we do is relationship building, whether it be with
a patient or the doctor,” she says. “Being in cancer centers, the patients can come directly to us. But we still have to build trust with the doctors to service their patients. Also, before patients go into surgery at one of our hospital locations, we go bedside to the patient and provide a post-surgical camisole for the drains and the tubes for mastectomies.”
Magennis says they work diligently to create relationships with other hospitals as well. They also build relationships with plastic surgeons who may not work in the hospital they are located in. n
Joseph Duffy is a freelance writer and marketing consultant, and a regular contributor to HME Business. He can be reached via e-mail at joe@prooferati.com.
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