Page 25 - HME Business, November/December 2020

Sleep Therapy’s Coronavirus Academy
Sleep providers had to tackle a tough learning curve during the early
days of the COVID-19 public health emergency. What are the lessons they learned, the insights they gained, and how do they apply to the rest of the industry and possible future outbreaks?
By David Kopf
Sleep therapy often functions as an excellent perfect micro that defines the macro of the home medical equipment business. We’ve seen this with several trends, such as the interplay
of technology and therapy,
remote patient monitoring, coordinating with multiple funding sources, and
outcomes-oriented healthcare.
And now we’re seeing it with COVID-19.
When it comes to the public health emergency, providers of sleep therapy equipment and services have had to ascend a steep learning curve to reshape how they safely and effectively provide products and services, and they have had to innovate new workflows and use new tools to get there.
Now that we are several months into the public health emergency and have a moment to look back and assess, where do sleep providers stand? What lessons have they learned? What insights have they gained? How does all this help them prepare for future spikes in COVID-19, or worse, another pandemic? They’re good ques- tions to ask, because that learning curve can apply to the rest of the industry.
To help answer those questions are Gary Sheehan, MBA, the CEO of New England
regional sleep and respiratory provider Spiro Health (spirohealthservices.com), and Sonal Matai, the business leader of Philips North America Sleep and Respiratory. Both share a variety of insights on sleep therapy business, care, technology and how COVID-19 has influ- enced the entire sector. Let’s dive in:
HMEB: If you had to give a really tight, thumbnail description, how would you characterize HME providers’ “education” when it’s come to the last six or seven months? Did they pass the test?
Sonal: At the outset, there was some wondering about “what does it mean?” For all of us in the industry, we were asking, what does it truly mean in terms of how will you manage
a business, where will get our patients and a referral? How will we do what we do today? And if I was to look at the last few months, I think the industry and everyone across it have responded exceptionally elegantly to it.
At the outset, there were some struggles. It took a while for everybody to realize that it’s
not going away and that they needed to change their ways. I think, initially, there were some naysayers in terms of connectivity and managing your business with a remote mindset: “How
can you do that? How will you move your own patient intake team or your patient service team, etc. and do remote setup?” Not everyone was initially there, but the way everyone ultimately valued and understood that they needed to get into this remote environment and looked at what was needed to be successful has been quite phenomenal.
Gary: Most of the sleep providers I’ve talked to were very creative and had done a really good job of providing uninterrupted service. You just adapt a little bit: the consultations and the fitting is different, and some of these 2D and 3D mask fitters that have come out came out at exactly the right time for us. It’s been great to have that tool in our toolkit because we haven’t lost as much in the way of compliance as we probably would have guessed eight or nine months ago.
HMEB: What was the initial transition like?
Gary: We were monitoring the situation globally and had real concerns in February and into March. We made the decision Wednesday, March 11 to push everybody to remote begin- ning that Friday — of course, Friday the 13th. Over that weekend, we had to figure out how to run our business with our entire employee population at home. We were fortunate to
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