Page 14 - HME Business, August/September 2019

By David Kopf
Problem Solvers
Deliveries: Bringing Order to Chaos
How information technology can play a much larger role in managing HME providers’ deliveries and service calls than simply tracking vehicles.
When we think about using technology to improve delivery management for an HME provider business, we often think about the logistics planning side of the equation: tracking the trucks in the field; ensuring they’re getting optimal gas mileage; making sure route planning is efficient.
But that’s only one side of the equation. There are issues much closer to the customer service, inventory control, and documentation side of the business that must be managed as well. And, in fact, this might be where information technology can make an even bigger difference, as well as in terms of customer service, inventory management, employee retention, and the bottom line.
To explore this topic, I sat down with Lisa Anderson, education and outreach director for Universal Software
Systems (universalss.com), which offers its
HDMS Mobile Driver solution, to discuss
IT’s larger role in help providers.
HMEB: How far has technology made its way into HME deliveries?
Anderson: As consumers, we’re all
very advanced in our daily lives at home.
When we get to our HME offices — what
we find as a software vendor with our
clients — is that it’s all very delayed; it is
very old school. When it comes time to
get in the delivery van and get out to the
client’s house, or respond to an urgent call
or an urgent service problem, the system
completely breaks down because there is
not a lot of cross-communication between the office and then what is really going on out on the road.
We see this as the biggest opportunity to really push the HME industry into 2019 and into the future, and really just make everyone’s life so much easier.
HMEB: What have been HME providers’ top concerns and issues, when it comes to managing their deliveries and their repair calls?
Anderson: The most common thing that we will hear from our clients is that there are all these moments where an exception happens on the fly. Most of their day, in delivering or servicing equipment, sounds like an exception more than the rule.
Something that happens all the time is, our providers will send their fleet out on the road for all of the in-home deliveries for the day. And then the hospital will call with a sudden discharge, or an oxygen client or someone that’s on a life-sustaining vent. Or those little more, urgent types of services will interrupt the normal process.
How do you communicate that out to the driver on the road? The drivers are then put in the situation where, not only are they in a heavy vehicle hurtling down a freeway, but they need to stop, and look at a map. They’re writing
out handwritten delivery tickets based on what they’re hearing over patchy cellphone service. They’re writing down 16-digit serial numbers and trying to figure out if they have the equipment in the back of their van — some extras — because they’re nearby, that they could squeeze things in.
That was always the scenario we were hearing: they made a plan and then very quickly that plan went out the window. So that was probably the most common.
HMEB: It has a cascade effect, doesn’t it?
Anderson: Absolutely. Because then the family is always in upheaval. “Are they coming? When are they coming? Where are they?” It’s always the home base trying to manage the care for the patient and then they can’t get ahold of the driver. The driver is getting bits and pieces. I feel like the delivery techs of these HME businesses are the unsung heroes because they’re in make-it-work mode all day long.
But what they come home with at the end of the night is a clipboard full of hand- written, scratchy, crazy, documentation. They were trying to capture everything while they were there with the patient for the best of their company — to not have to send another truck back out another day. But because it is all very segmented and not using technology or any kind of transpar- ency, then that’s a manual work order some- one’s keying in. And maybe it doesn’t get confirmed as quickly to turn into revenue because it’s an exception. So someone had to look at it and piece it all together, where the normal workflow just followed along in a little assembly line.
Right from the get-go, the best intentions always go out the window by 10 a.m. when we’re talking about a large, local fleet.
HMEB: What does this mean from a bottom-line perspective? For example, there might be providers that have really good billing software in place but not necessarily any sort delivery-management software. What’s this doing to their business?
Anderson: The biggest problem we see that they have is turnover because these people just get burnt out. The delivery techs have to provide better service than even your retail storefronts because they’re delivering a level of trust and comfort like none of your other employees are, because they’re in that person’s home.
... What we see happening is, without any kind of technology there, it is very manual. There’s emergency on-call shift, where someone has to be avail- able to take a late-night delivery and it’s all very labor-intensive. So we knew that they had to start embracing technology to avoid some of that burnout that comes along with a manual process.
HMEB: So, how can providers better manage their mobile deliveries and their service calls, and how does technology fit into that?
Anderson: One of the things we see that makes it a lot easier is staging. In every warehouse of our providers that keeps their own equipment in stock, we know that it’s not the driver that climbs around and grabs stuff. They have people staging truck bays so that the delivery techs can show up and help
“The most common thing that we will hear from our clients is that there are all these moments where an exception happens on the fly. ... they made
a plan and then very quickly that plan went out the window.”
— Lisa Anderson, education and outreach director for Universal Software Systems
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