Page 8 - Mobility Management, October 2017

editor’s note
Deserving Better
Across the street from me lives a dear friend I’ll call Grace. She reminds me of an actress from Hollywood’s Golden Age. She still gets her hair done every week, and seemingly is always in tailored clothes, even when just getting her mail.
And at almost 92, Grace is still full of fire.
“I hate seniors,” she’s told me. “They’re so intolerant of young people. Every
generation thinks the next generation’s music is awful. But it’s not. You just have to open your mind a little. Try new things.”
She pauses to give a disgruntled hmphhh.
“But they don’t want to. That’s why I hate seniors.”
Grace has slowed a bit the last few years, tethered now to a home oxygen
system. She knows a little of what I do, so the last time I was at her house, she showed me a small stack of letters: “Honey, can you read these?”
The letters were from an oxygen supplier who was going out of business and needed their equipment back. Grace had ignored the first few letters, till one came with Final Notice stamped in red.
She needed to find another supplier, I said. She knew, but her adult kids had been turned away by other local DME suppliers.
“They said they couldn’t take me,” Grace said. “That makes no sense.”
I tried a brief explanation of Medicare’s competitive bidding program and confirmed that not every oxygen supplier can work with Medicare beneficia- ries anymore.
“Well, I called Medicare,” Grace said, “and a nice young man gave me phone numbers, but some of those suppliers aren’t even in California! I found one that’s local, but they said I have to qualify all over again. Is my oxygen supplier going to take my tanks right now? I need those!”
Grace has been independent her whole life. It’s so wrong that now, when she needs a little help, an inherently flawed competitive bidding system is causing this level of anxiety.
The folks at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services still insist that access to DME hasn’t been impacted. I want to walk them across the street.
Grace’s oxygen supplier eventually told her to keep the tanks as long as she needed. The next day, VGM (thank you, Greg Packer) offered their assistance.
But what happens to all the other Graces — those who don’t live across the street from an editor who covers this industry?
If the lamp in my home office window is on too late, Grace calls me in the morning. “You work too much,” she grumbles. “I watched your window, and I saw what time you turned the light out last night.”
These are the people who raised us and built our communities and are still looking after us. They deserve so much better. We all do.
Laurie Watanabe, Editor lwatanabe@1105media.com @CRTeditor
mobilitymgmt.com Volume 16, No. 10
October 2017
Laurie Watanabe
(949) 265-1573
Sydny Shepard
Wendy Byle Byle Design
Charles Johnson Marlin Mowatt
Karen Cavallo
(760) 610-0800
Caroline Stover
(323) 605-4398
INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS GROUP
Editor
Content Editor
Design
Production Coordinator
Director of Online Product Development
Group Publisher Integrated Media Consultant
President & Group Publisher Group Publisher Group Circulation Director Group Marketing Director Group Social Media Editor
Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Technology Officer
Executive Vice President
Executive Chairman
REACHING THE STAFF
Kevin O’Grady Karen Cavallo Irene Fincher Susan May Sydny Shepard
Rajeev Kapur Henry Allain Craig Rucker Erik A. Lindgren
Michael J. Valenti Jeffrey S. Klein
Staff may be reached via e-mail, telephone, fax, or mail. A list of editors and contact information is also available online at mobilitymgmt.com.
E-mail: To e-mail any member of the staff, please use the following form: FirstinitialLastname@1105media.com
Dallas Office (weekdays 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. CT) Telephone 972-687-6700; Fax 866-779-9095 14901 Quorum Drive, Suite 425, Dallas, TX 75254
Corporate Office (weekdays, 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. PT) Telephone 818-814-5200; Fax 818-734-1522
9201 Oakdale Avenue, Suite 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311
6 OCTOBER 2017 | MOBILITY MANAGEMENT
MobilityMgmt.com