Page 17 - HME Business, July/August 2022

Tactical Back Office
tacticalbackoffice.com
HME staffing firm Tactical Back Office was born out of an HME provider seeking a new approach to creating flexible, scalable teams for HME businesses. The company trains and connects remote workers based in the Philippines with U.S. HME providers to balance their staffing needs.
“Tactical Back Office was born out of ourDMEcompanywhentheruralrollout occurred in 2016,” says Tactical Back OfficefounderToddUsher.“Wetookthat big 60 percent pay cut, and we couldn’t quite pay people the $15 an hour plus what theyweredemanding,sothiswasthenext best idea.
“We started hiring our Philippine team and that worked out well for us, so that’s how the idea started,” he continues. “And then we launched Tactical Back Office with a sleep lab locally in Fresno that took on their first personnel, and we’ve grown from that point.”
So, what’s the difference between a staffing service and outsourcing? If a provider outsources work, it pays for remote or on-site, outsourced personnel, or if it works with a third-party billing and collections company, it might pay a percentage of revenue collected. If there are staff issues or anything like that, the provider works through a point person at the company.
However, using a staffing agency such as Tactical Back Office, the personnel are the provider’s employees and are managed and administered in the usual way. TBO still pays the employee, but it checks in with the HME provider to confirm hours worked. TBO also administers HR tasks such as processing PTO, pay, sick time, local holidays in the Philippines, double time, and overtime.
“When we onboard them with us, we put them through training and then we assign them to the client,” Usher explains. “They are not shared with any other client. ... We assign personnel directly to the client or the HME provider, and it is their employee from that day forward.”
As mentioned, Tactical Back Office’s team is based in the Philippines, which allows TBO to keep the cost of its labor lower than what it would pay domestically. The company trains its team in billing
procedures, HME software systems, reimbursement LCDs, and all the skills andspecializedknowledgerequiredto carry out the various workflows in an HME business. TBO’s team members work thesamehoursastheprovider’sstaffso that they seamlessly fit into the provider’s operations. The only difference is that they are working remotely.
In terms of English skills, people in the Philippines have been speaking English since they were in kindergarten, which enables them to engage with other employees and anyone in a patient’s care continuum without problems. And if there are employees whose English isn’t “spot on,” Usher says those employees can still work in back-end roles, such as posting or billing.
Having the necessary knowledge, skills, training and language means TBO’s team members are now carrying out a variety of roles at HME businesses.
“A lot of folks, because of our name, think it’s just back office, like billing and posting,” Usher notes. “When in fact, most of our team members are doing front office work. They are answering the phones. They’re acting in an operator role. They’re directing phone calls. They’re handling resupply patients and hospital discharges. They’re handling hospital beds. We even have hospice folks that are being assigned to process hospice orders.”
And how are TBO’s employees doing out in the field? There are many longer- term employees that have thrived since the company first launched its services, according to Usher.
“They are getting promoted to new positions within the businesses or clients that we have. So we don’t actually do the promotion,” he says. “The clients are so impressed with the quality of personnel they’re getting that they call us and say, ‘I need to promote this person,’ for whatever role that might be. It’s usually intake lead,
intake supervisors, and senior intake positions.
“That’s the success that we’re experiencing, because we’re providing this personnel, and the DME or HME provider recognizes the fact that they haven’t had that quality of personnel before and they want to reward them for it,” Usher continues. “Which is really encouraging for us, because we get to see these people succeed and actually get promoted through the ranks because of the hard work that they’re doing all on the provider’s behalf.”
rtNOW
rtnow.net
There are lots of HME service categories that involve highly specialized knowledge and expertise. A couple of examples of that would be sleep therapy and respiratory care. Both services involve clinical staff — respiratory therapists — to be involved in the process, not just to ensure optimal outcomes but also to ensure that reimbursement requirements are satisfied.
Traditionally, those workflows have involved the RT working directly with the patient and usually in person. However, with travel costs, time and the limitations of performing front-line healthcare work during an ongoing public health emergency, provisioning that in-person care and consultation can get expensive and logistically inefficient.
Enter rtNOW, which provides its team of “tele-respiratory” therapists that help offset that cost and complication, as well as act as a pressure relieve valve that lets provider clinical staff focus on more in-depth care issues. Using videoconferencing and IT innovations, as well as rtNOW’s remote RTs can carry out tasks such as scheduling new PAP setups; ongoing PAP follow-ups to ensure adherence for therapeutic benefit and billing requirements; and virtual remote ventilator follow-ups.
“We assign personnel directly to the client or the HME provider, and it is their employee from that day forward. ... The clients are so impressed with the quality of personnel they’re getting that they call us and say, ‘I need to promote this person,’ for whatever role that might be.”
— Todd Usher, Tactical Back Office
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