HME News is the monthly business newspaper for home medical equipment providers. This controlled circulation publication reaches 17,100 home medical equipment services providers, including traditional HME dealers & suppliers, hospital- and pharmacy-o
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8 WWW.HMENEWS.COM / JUNE 2016 / HME NEWS Editorial PUBLISHER Rick Rector rrector@hmenews.com EDITOR Liz Beaulieu ebeaulieu@hmenews.com MANAGING EDITOR Theresa Flaherty tfl aherty@hmenews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Tracy Orzel torzel@hmenews.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR John Andrews EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brook Taliaferro EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING OF FICE 106 Lafayette Street PO Box 998 Yarmouth, ME 04096 207-846-0600 (fax) 207-846-0657 ADVERTISING ACCOUNT MANAGER Jo-Ellen Reed jreed@hmenews.com ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER Michele Baranowski mbaranowski@hmenews.com PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lise Dubois ldubois@unitedpublications.com REPRINTS For custom reprints or digital reuse, please contact our reprint partner, The YGS Group, by calling 717-505-9701, ext. 100, or unitedpublications@theygsgroup.com ART CREDITS Steve Meyers: cartoon SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION www.hmenews.com/subscribe HME News PO Box 47860 Plymouth, MN 55447-0860 800-869-6882 Publishers of specialized busi ness newspapers including HME News and Security Systems News. Producers of the HME News Business Summit and the Home Health Technology Summit. PRESIDENT & CEO J.G. Taliaferro, Jr. VICE PRESIDENT Rick Rector By choice or by necessity M ANAGING EDITOR Theresa and I were talking yesterday about the news that UnitedHealthcare will be pulling out of the Obamacare exchanges in all but a handful of states. The reason: The health insurance giant is losing money in the health exchang- es. Just how much money? Oh, an expected $650 million this year alone. There's obviously a lot of buzz about this news in the mainstream media, but The- resa and I were scratching our heads over whether or not there's an angle for our little niche-y publication. We didn't come up with anything that day, but I was still scratching my head about it the next morning. I don't know that there's an impact on HME providers from UnitedHealthcare's decision per se, but there may be a mes- sage in it for them. (Before I continue, please put all politics about Obamacare and United- Healthcare aside, and bear with me.) As a $157.1 billion operation (As Theresa says, "That boggles the mind"), UnitedHealthcare has the luxury of making a number of decisions that HME providers can't afford to make, but on a basic level and from a busi- ness perspective, there's something to be said about a company deciding to forgo a line of business because it has led to losses. This seems to be a predicament that a lot of HME providers fi nd themselves in these days, with another round of competitive bidding pricing delivering even steeper reim- bursement cuts than the last. A recent HME Newspoll asked HME companies if they accepted the competitive bidding contracts they were offered (see story page 3), and there were a lot of comments to the effect of: We accepted them because we had no choice. Tell that to Josh Temple at OxyMed (see story page 12). He considers the company a "mom-and-pop," with two locations. It lost about 45% of its business during the original Round 2. "That was when we were forced to look into different avenues to remain profi table and, most importantly, in business," he wrote to me in an email. Temple says OxyMed significantly increased the business it does with com- mercial insurances and with private-pay customers. It has hung its hat on offering a service-intense respiratory and sleep pro- gram that includes a wide variety of prod- ucts, one-on-one education, and follow-up care. "Since we opened in 2010, we have dou- bled our size, moved into a bigger location and added employees, all while not receiv- ing a Medicare bid," he wrote. United Healthcare and OxyMed may be miles apart, but they have one thing in com- mon: They've learned to say no, either by choice or by necessity. HME LIZ BEAULIEU BY EDDY HSU 2 016 IS proving to be another excit- ing year for information technology in the HME industry. Technology continues to expand into all aspects of the human experience, and it is mak- ing increasingly aggressive inroads into health care, specifi cally for HME providers. While technology offers many signifi cant benefi ts, it can also burden HME providers with increased costs. To keep up, physician practices, as well as HME providers, must continually invest in additional technology while simultaneously looking for cost-sav- ing measures to balance things out. LET TECHNOLOGY EASE YOUR PAIN In health care and HME, as in just about every business and industry, consumers are looking for new technology that will make their lives better or make tasks easier for them to accomplish. Today, when patients visit a medical practice, they expect that their doctors utilize the latest technology, and they expect to be able to access their appointments, personal information and history by having access to a patient portal. Similarly, your customers expect you to be technologically savvy. They expect you to be able to instantly access their informa- tion and determine whether the products FOR TECH, BENEFITS OUTWEIGH COSTS they need are in stock and, if not, when they will be. Having a fully-functional patient information system is crucial, but so is an excellent inventory control sys- tem. Your customers don't want to see you rifl ing through paperwork to fi nd out when you can get their wheel- chair—they expect you to be able to access that information instantly on your computer. Wi t h t h e c o n s t a n t l y - expanding documentation requirements, you also need more tech to drive your busi- n e s s o p e r a t i o n s . H a v i n g software that ensures your employees follow the proper documentation and delivery procedure increases your reimbursement rate and can virtually eliminate rejections based on simple mistakes. Without a doubt, the greatest challenge facing HME providers today is increased billing pressure and decreasing rates of reimbursement. Technology is the single easiest way to reduce the billing burden and increase the revenue you can capture. Of course implementing new technology can be daunting for you and your employ- ees, but once it's up and running, the return on investment only goes up. PROVIDE PATIENTS WITH ACCESS In addition to using technology during healthcare visits, patients are increas- ingly using technology to monitor their own health 24-7. They increasingly access patient portals to access data and infor- mation from their physi- cian's offi ces and pharmacies. Although there are patient segments that still expect to speak with providers and retailers face-to-face, large numbers of people are becom- ing comfortable with electron- ic communication via patient portals, smartphone apps, and online ordering. These progressive patients are excited about the opportunity to moni- tor every aspect of their health and trans- mit their health data seamlessly to health- care providers via Bluetooth. The catch is that they expect their healthcare providers, including HME providers, to provide them with constant access to their health data, pending orders, reorder status and more. Thus, in addition to having software for you and your employees to seamless- ly monitor patient records and inventory, HME providers are increasingly seeking EDDY HSU T E C H N O L O G Y S E E PA G E 2 2