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have products and raw materials to move from one continent to the other.
“Some companies like us, as a medical device company, we saw signifi- cant demands on the respiratory side,” Diacopoulos continues. “You’ve heard the stories about the ventilator shortages in the early part of 2020, and what the U.S. govern- ment undertook to drive supply chains up [via the Defense Production Act]. That led to high expediting of products from across the globe or raw materials from across the globe to support the increased demand.”
Now, instead of waiting for materials to make their way by the ocean on a 30-day or longer journey, manufacturers were paying to deliver those materials by air in order to scale up production in a way that would hopefully keep pace with a rapidly expanding public health emergency.
Of course, the demand for oxygen
equipment isn’t just due to the public health emergency, either.
“COPD didn’t go anywhere,” notes Jon Schultz, director of sales OxyGo. “With COVID-19, we have a new chal- lenge with the respiratory that’s affecting so many other people. Our product can be a substitute for a lot of situations with oxygen. Depending on the patient’s situ- ation they can use our product instead of a stationary device for a lot of the time.
“So providers can take their stationaries away from regular oxygen patients and re-deploythemwherethey’rereallyneeded for COVID,” Schultz explains. “That’s been going on for a while; I’ve seen it through a lot of different levels of DMEs. It seems to be going pretty well. And anything we can do to keep the supply up, we’re going to do. It’s not just the concentrators and it was still a lot of other products there.
THE DEMAND SIDE OF COVID-19
The big change in demand for oxygen equipment is that while ventila- tion was initially seen as the main treat- ment for COVID-19, that shifted more toward oxygen becoming the preferred treatment methodology by hospitals. However, it’s important to understand how that’s playing out. There is definitely an increased use of oxygen concentrators in the hospital, but patients being sent home by their physicians with oxygen equipment, and some patients are being prescribed oxygen devices even before getting to the hospital.
“They’re using oxygen to try to keep people out of the emergency room and keep people out of the hospital alto- gether,” AdaptHealth’s Parnes explains. “And we’re seeing a tremendous increase in demand for high liter flow concentra- tors; particularly oxygen concentrators that can go up to 10 liters per minute. We’re seeing a demand for those because some of those patients can ride it out
without having to be in the ICU, as long as they have a higher liter flow under the care of a doctor at home. That would be bucketnumberone.
“Bucket number two is the patients that are being sent home post-COVID,” he continues. “They went to the hospital, they recovered, and their sats are okay. They’re not great, they’re not in danger anymore, but they clearly need oxygen to continue to help them get stronger and get their body back to oxygen levels that are satisfactory.
“And then the last bucket is patients that have COVID symptoms, and the doctors are trying to really get ahead of this by saying, ‘Hey, let me prescribe you oxygen in your home. Take this, take a pulse ox, take an oxygen concentrator in your home, call me if your sats drop below 90 or 89 or something like that, and then we can evaluate whether or not you should go to the hospital,’” Parnes says.
Fortunately, providers such as AdaptHealthsawwhatwashappeningin China in January and February of 2020, and then saw the initial demand for ventilators, and realized that there was going to be increased demand for all sorts of oxygen equipment and services and needed to rampup.Sotheydideverythingtocreate a robust supply capacity ahead of time.
However, from that point onward, the demand on oxygen providers has been a “hockey stick” growth chart that essen- tially overlaps with COVID-19’s diagnosis rate. Inventory wasn’t going to be the sole solution. Technology and people — two key provider assets — would need to play an essential role.
“Starting with the first wave of the pandemic, particularly with our hospital partners, we worked on a number of fronts to expand portal technology and e-prescribing,” Parnes says. “Working to give on-demand inventory for our hospital partners so that they could discharge patients quicker. And with e-prescribing,
Management Solutions | Technology | Products
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“Starting with the first wave of the pandemic ... we worked on a number of fronts to expand portal technology and e-prescribing.”
— Josh Parnes, AdaptHealth