Page 27 - HME Business, November/December 2019

The Best of the Best
include not only HME offerings, but also services and offerings that providers can use to run their business.
And, now in its sixth edition, the New Products of The Year continues to reflect the best of the great products and services this industry has to offer. This year’s competition produced 14 winning products were selected across 13 categories. The categories were:
Business Services
Business Technology – Complete HME
Management Solutions Business Technology – Specialized
Solutions
Incontinence & Urology Supplies Mobility – Power & Manual Wheelchairs Respiratory – In-Home Equipment Respiratory – Portable Equipment Retail
Seating and Positioning
Sleep – Resupply Items & Related Sleep
Products
Sleep – Therapy Systems
Women’s Health Products
Wound Care
To judge the entries, a panel of anonymous
HME providers across a variety of disciplines scored the entries. This year saw incredible support from the providers who shared their greatly appreciated expertise and experience with the program.
Without our panel of provider judges, this program wouldn’t have nearly the weight it does. It’d be one thing if the staff of HME Business or a group of third-party experts from the industry judged the entries, but this awards program seeks to go right to the HME professionals that will be using these products — the providers themselves — and ask them to review and score the entries. Simply put, their opinion matters the most.
The resulting winners represent a compel- ling array of products across a wide variety of categories. The year’s competition was partic- ularly hot in the retail category, as well as the oxygen, sleep and software categories. It’s worth noting that in those super-competitive categories, the margin of victory was exceed- ingly narrow and the temptation to offer “silver” and “bronze” awards to the other products was hard to resist. However, that’s not what this awards program is about. We already know the products and services in this industry are great; our goal is to recognize the absolute top winner for each category.
So, bearing all that in mind, let’s take a look at the 2019 New Product of the Year Award winners and see how they help HME providers be the best of the best:
Now in the sixth year of hosting the annual HMEB New Products Award competition, our panel of provider judges has landed on some HME products and services that truly deserve some time in the spotlight.
ear after year, the HME indus- try’s manufacturers turn out top-quality medical products that constantly raise the bar in terms of innovation, features and care benefits. Similarly,
And each year, HME Business magazine and a panel of volunteer judges from the HME provider community have the difficult task
of trying to select the best of those top-tier products and business services from the flood of entries we get from the industry’s service providers and product vendors. It’s an onerous task to be sure.
But it’s an important one: Home medical equipment doesn’t just help patients live
with a medical condition, it helps them live beyond that medical condition. It can improve outcomes, can improve patients’ quality of life and, if it is a stand-out example, raises their expectations of what HME should be.
And from the providers’ side of the equa- tion, top-tier HME offerings help them run better businesses and provide the kind of care that will make a demonstrable positive improvement in their patients’ lives. Such equipment not only helps improve care, but raises the provider’s profile among its referral partners.
That’s why we created the HME Business New Products of The Year. We wanted to recognize outstanding offerings across a broad range of product categories that
BY
y David Kopf
the service providers in the industry are constantly upping their game to offer services that will help providers run more efficient businesses and rapidly respond to patient and referral partner needs.
Management Solutions | Technology | Products hme-business.com | November/December 2019 | HMEBusiness 11