I’m not going to name names, but many years ago, as a young surveyor, I was inspecting delivery vehicles at a place (the location will remain unnamed) and observed one of the worst safety hazards I ever saw in my career. A delivery technician who covered a two-state territory had been in the adjacent state where fireworks were legal, and decided to stock up for the
Topics: HME Accreditation Requirements, Avoiding Deficiencies, Delivery, Oxygen, Equipment
The very first standard in the HQAA Accreditation Standards is ORG 1 MISSION & VISION. The “mission & vision” standard is the first standard for a reason: the mission and vision set the tone for your organization’s corporate culture and define who you are and why you exist. They represent not only what your organization does, but why it does it. The “how it does it” will come later with the various policies & procedures, but this first standard talks about something more basic and philosophical.
Topics: HME Accreditation Requirements
Accreditation documentation requirements for the human resource files are relatively straightforward, yet the human resource (“HR”) standards continue to be some of the most frequently cited standards and generate the most questions from DME customers. HQAA’s recent standards revisions and updates included several of the HR standards. This fact, along with the continued questions and citations for HR standards suggest it was time to revisit the personnel file and review expectations.
Topics: Employee Training, Personnel Files, Renewing Accreditation, HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Avoiding Deficiencies
On February 2nd, the movie “GROUNDHOG DAY” played almost continuously on a cable station. You couldn’t miss it if you tried. Funny, and –dare I say— “timeless”, the movie is about a guy stuck in a pattern of repeating the day over and over and over again. Humor ensues, but the theme is his frustration with living the same tired old day out repeatedly. It’s very frustrating to see the same mistakes made repeatedly and its human nature to try to correct those mistakes. Thus, the revised standards.
Topics: HME Accreditation Requirements
Harry Truman, the 33rd President of the United States had a famous slogan, which appeared on a plaque on his desk: “The Buck Stops Here”. Referring to “passing the buck”; that is, shifting blame or responsibility, the saying demonstrates a person’s willingness and ability to take responsibility, find solutions, and lead by example.
Topics: HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Business Practices, Surveys
A dictionary defines disclosure as “the action of making new information known or the action or process of revealing information.” In the medical world, healthcare providers define disclosure as “a release of information to persons or entities other than the patient who is the subject of the information.”
Topics: HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Compliance, Business Practices, DMEPOS
Those of us who have been in the DME industry for enough years remember when every DME organization in the country had a storage room full of vertical files and/or bank boxes full of old patient records. The boxes were stored in piles, often piled up to the ceiling. Usually there were labels or writing on the boxes—something like “April 1987-January 1988” or “1990—A-L”. The boxes and filing cabinets were full of manila and Pend-a-flex folders labeled with patient names and chock full of medical records, billing information, social security numbers, dates of birth, and enough demographic information to make a telemarketer’s day.
Topics: Personnel Files, HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Patient File Requirements, Avoiding Deficiencies
It's tempting to believe that those Amazon trucks that zip down your street every day are a completely new phenomenon. But if you believed that, you’d be wrong. Today, Amazon trucks descend on neighborhoods bringing appliances, clothes, books & music, and even groceries. A generation earlier, we ordered music from flyers in the newspaper—carefully selecting stamps with our favorite titles and sticking them on the order page, promising to buy four or five additional albums in return for a half dozen free ones up front. And the generation before that ordered small appliances and kitchenware from Jewel T men. And the generation before that could order up a mail order “kit house” from the Sears Roebuck Catalog. Truth be told, mail order is as old as the mail itself. Subsequent generations have refined the practice over the last century and a half; but the practice of mail order anything is not new!
Topics: HME Accreditation Requirements, Delivery, Warehouse, Customer Service, Equipment
The pandemic has changed how we look at employment in the United States in a multitude of ways. Many of us now “telecommute” to work, which opens up the opportunity to live farther from the office than ever before. Young people have new and different considerations and priorities when it comes to accepting a job. And of course, there’s the fact that it is increasingly more difficult to recruit and retain good long-term employees. Complicating these issues specifically in our industry are the pesky and sometimes misunderstood background check requirements.
Topics: Quality, Security, HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Compliance, Showroom, Retail, Delivery, Competence, OIG
Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of DME owners, managers, and staff more than the Office of the Inspector General (the “OIG”). The fear is perhaps deserved by an extremely small handful of industry people. The vast majority of our industry rank and file have nothing to fear from this sometimes maligned and misunderstood government agency.
Topics: Billing, HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Compliance, Avoiding Deficiencies, CMS, Business Practices, OIG
