Page 6 - HME Business, February 2018

Editor’s Note
The Right Questions
Providers should ask fundamental questions about the role they play in post-acute care.
Volume 25 Number 2 February 2018
Editor
Art Director Production Coordinator
Director of Online Product Development
Group Publisher
Integrated Media Consultant
David Kopf
(949) 265-1561
Laurie Layman Charles Johnson
Marlin Mowatt Karen Cavallo
(760) 610-0800 Caroline Stover (323) 605-4398
The HME industry might be having
a bit of an existentialist moment. Over the past decade, HME has suffered an incredible amount
of tumult. It’s as though the ground has broken up and shifted beneath providers’ feet, and it’s dif cult to determine where they stand.
Changes in both the overall healthcare market- place, as well as HME-speci c reimbursement changes, should be forcing every HME provider owner and manager to consider where his or her business sits in the food chain. Providers should be asking themselves almost philosophical ques- tions, such as, what is our core competency? What unique value do we provide? What stakes do we hold in the healthcare landscape?
The answers to those questions aren’t exactly obvious, but they are absolutely pertinent when it comes to determining an HME business’s position in the market and ensuring its long-term success. Better yet, providers just might discover that in answering them, they will see a roadmap through changes in the post-acute care space and healthcare as a whole.
The fundamental a provider should ask itself
is where do they stand when it comes to helping improve outcomes. The answer should be, “in the perfect position.” Your referral partners are under incredible pressure from payers, health plans, Medicare and other funding sources to demon- strate that they are helping patients see quanti able results. In fact, their funding hinges on it.
You Can Help
Given that providers are dealing directly at the patient level, the are in an excellent position to help ensure those results. In fact, we’re starting to see some incredible tools being developed to help them do this. Looking at sleep therapy and diabetes care management, providers are in a pivotal position
to not just provision equipment that helps treat a condition and provide a therapeutic bene t, but to monitor and perfect that care.
Moreover, those tools help track results, which providers can deliver to their referral partners, who in turn can use them to demonstrably prove their value to their funding sources. Being able to help your referrals demonstrate that patients are seeing positive outcomes and thusly help secure your
referrals’ revenue for them is an obviously advanta- geous place to be. This is where you need to situate your business.
Now, ask yourself, are you in this position? With all your services and product lines? Ask yourself, how effectively is your business ensuring outcomes and communicating them to the referral for every- thing that it does? Chances are, you might be able to answer yes for some of the services and products you provide, but no for most of them.
That’s okay. The reason you can’t say yes is that not all the products are there, yet. Moreover, not all your referrals partners are there, either. However, you shouldn’t let your manufacturers or your referral sources lead the way. Now is the time for you to start de ning that market position.
When it comes to the post-acute space if you can help improve incomes and then create objective metrics that prove that both to your referrals and their funding sources, you can reinforce you stake in the care continuum.
Now is the time to start investigating, to start asking doctors and other referrals how they de ne outcomes for one type of care or another. How
do they communicate that to referrals? Do their referrals use the same language? How frequently do they report this information? What types of information do they wish they could communicate to their referrals to further make their case?
HME businesses need to start considering how they can devise methods for tracking metrics that demonstrate the ef cacy of their products and services, and then communicate it back to their referrals in ways that they can pass along to their funding sources.
I understand that there’s not a lot of incentive
to blaze new trails. In a declining reimburse-
ment environment, no HME provider is feeling very inclined to start thinking about what metrics de ne homecare patient outcomes, let alone how to track and report them, but I’m beginning to think that long-term success and survival in the post- acute care space hinges on it.
David Kopf Editor
HME Business
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Steve Ackerman
President Spectrum Medical
Jeffrey S. Baird, Esq.
Chairman of the Health Care Group of Brown & Fortunato, P.C.
Rob Baumhover
Director of Retail Services for VGM Retail Services
Ty Bello, RCC
President and Founder Team@Work
Georgie Blackburn
Vice President, Government Relations and Legislative Affairs BLACKBURN’S
Todd Blockinger
Senior Director of Sales The MED Group
Rob Boyeye
Executive Vice President of HME Brightree LLC
Sandra Canally
President
The Compliance Team Inc.
George Coppola
Director of Marketing CAIRE Medical
John C Eberhart
President Eberhart Home Health Inc.
John Letizia
President of Laurel Medical Supplies Inc.
Joe Lewarski
Vice President of Global Respiratory and Sleep Drive Devilbiss
Ron Resnick
President Blue Chip Medical Products Inc.
Tom Ryan
President and CEO AAHomecare
Wayne Slavitt
Founder and CEO Mobül: The Mobility Store
Wayne van Halem
President and Founder The van Halem Group LLC
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REACHING THE STAFF
Kevin O’Grady Karen Cavallo Irene Fincher Susan May Sydny Shephard
Rajeev Kapur Henry Allain Erik A. Lindgren
Michael J. Valenti Jeffrey S. Klein
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