Page 10 - DME Pharmacy, December 2019

Orthopedic Products:
At Your Service
There are a wide variety of customers that need orthopedic products. How can smart DME pharmacies serve that need?
By David Kopf
DME pharmacies act as a healthcare hub for their local com- munities — they are the first resource someone thinks of when they have a non-urgent health issue or when they need medical supplies. That means pharmacies must be able to serve up a wide spectrum of products. That spec- trum should include orthopedic products.
As a service, orthopedics offers serious potential because of its diverse customer base and because most orthopedic patients need more than one item. There are a wide variety of patient groups that are served by orthopedic goods: rehab patients, customers who are recovering from injuries, people suffering from sports injuries, athletic clients that need special support, post-surgery patients, maternity patients, and the senior population. Each of these clients needs specific items. For instance, ath- letic patients could need wrist, ankle, and knee braces, back supports, or, if they’ve suffered an injury, they could need ice packs, or slings.
When it comes to funded items, orthopedic goods often meet the criteria for reimbursement and are more often covered than not when prescribed as medically necessary. Also, when orthopedics are pre- scribed, there are many complementary items pharmacies can sell on a retail basis along with the funded products to increase their profits. For instance, when a patient is prescribed a knee brace, staff can suggest custom orthotic shoe inserts, heating pads, analgesics and knee wedges, and then sell those items on a cash basis.
THE ORTHOPEDIC MARKET
But if anything, it’s the numbers that really sell orthopedic as a revenue generator for pharmacies. There is a thriving customer base: Seniors are
living longer; young adults and baby boomers aren’t slowing down, con- tinuing to engage in sports and other challenging physical activity; and children and teenagers are participating in club and high school sports, as well as so-called action sports, such as skateboarding and snowboarding.
Those groups have fostered a growing orthopedic soft goods market. Look at these statistics:
• According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, acute ankle injuries are one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries in athletes and sedentary people, accounting for 2 million injuries per year. Nearly half of all ankle sprains occur during athletic activity. And once you sprain an ankle, you are more susceptible for repeat injuries.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2015 that sprains and strains from overextension in lifting accounted for 31 percent of worker injury claims.
• U.S. construction workers are at high risk for on-the-job injuries to muscles, tendons, joints, and nerves, according to a report in Occupa- tional and Environmental Medicine.
• The New York Times reported that Baby Boomers are staying active and getting the sprains and strains to prove it. Sports-related injuries in this age group went up 33 percent over a seven-year period while boomers come to the realization that the older they get, the longer it takes to heal.
• The CDC says that an estimated 54.4 million U.S. adults (22.7 percent) had been told they have some sort of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, lupus or fibromyalgia. The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis.
• Carpal tunnel syndrome affects 2.7 percent to 5.8 percent of the adult population, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians.
• Skateboarding injuries in 2011 accounted for 78,000 emergency room visits, says the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
10 December 2019 | DME Pharmacy
hme-business.com