HQAA Blog

In July 2018, CMS made a rather important announcement: that effective January 1, 2019, after the current bid schedule expires December 31^st, 2018, any Medicare provider can supply durable medical equipment and supplies to Medicare patients/recipients.  This will likely continue until the next round of bidding takes place, which will be at least a calendar year later.  This rule revision, known in the industry as the “Any Willing Provider” provision, is something the industry has talked about since competitive bidding began. “Wouldn’t it be fair,” one provider I spoke with posited, “if they {CMS} settled on a bid amount and opened it up to any credentialed, accredited, licensed DME to provide equipment and services?”

People have thrown around the words “re-invent,” “re-imagine,” and “re-purpose” in regards to their career, their life’s goals, their outlook, and their businesses quite a bit in the last decade.  It is considered chic to reinvent ourselves—in both our personal lives and our careers and businesses.  And it’s becoming more and more useful and important to do that in our DME businesses today.  Reimbursement changes (and by “changes”, we almost always mean “cuts”), as well as technological advances, coupled with the changing styles of consumerism, how people shop, and the fact that customers are willing to pay for an increasing amount of their healthcare all make the environment ripe and ready for change!  

A cousin of mine just passed away a few months ago after a long illness.  He was fortunate to be able to spend his last few weeks at home with the family and friends he loved around him, either looking out the window at his beautiful backyard or some days, on the back porch.  “Fortunate” is a relative word: he was in his early 50’s and should have lived a lot longer.  On the other hand, after weeks in hospitals and long term acute care (LTAC) facilities, he (and his family) were grateful that he was able to spend his last days at home.  During those last weeks, he tapped into the durable medical equipment industry more than most people do in a lifetime.  

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today” ……………Malcolm X

HQAA fields quite a few questions about ventilator care and whether or not the care is “clinical” in nature or non-clinical.  It may be helpful to clarify some points about ventilator care and review the definition of clinical respiratory services. 

The last year has given us several natural disasters.  We’ve seen “Nor’easters”, major fires, hurricanes, floods, and mudslides, which left major highways destroyed and communities completely isolated.  It’s been a rough year! 

Mathematician and author Vernor Vinge popularized (and named) the notion that technological change grows exponentially.  He called the phenomenon “exponentially accelerating change” and wrote both scientific articles and popular culture fiction about the concept.  We have all heard statistics thrown around; such as the fact that your child’s IPOD has more capability than the computer on the Apollo mission that landed on the moon in 1969.  Or that we’ve developed more technology in the last 25 years than in the previous 10,000 years.  

Early in my consulting and inspecting career, I became fascinated by the concept of customer service.  Why are some organizations more customer service-oriented than others?  How do organizations promote a culture that encourages excellent customer service?  What can staff and management do to make customers happy with their experience?  I noticed that some of the medical equipment companies I visited had excellent customer service, others had mediocre customer service, and still others (not many, thankfully!) had horrible customer service.  I set out to understand the art of customer service and tried to answer the above questions by gathering fact patterns and collecting observations about the customer service I witnessed on my visits. 

“Cheers to a new year and another chance to get it right” --Oprah Winfrey

Confidentiality, privacy, and the protection of their medical records and information is something that our customer/patients have come to expect.  It’s been over ten years since HIPAA (the Healthcare Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996) went into effect and consumers have had over a decade of education every time they interact with any business related to healthcare. The consumer is a lot more well informed about their rights now compared to a decade ago.  So, it might surprise some of us to find out that in the DME world, there are still instances of security and privacy breeches where medical information is NOT protected.