Oxygen management: Match equipment with needs

A. If you are plagued with calls after hours, and deliveries of oxygen therapy equipment outside of regularly scheduled deliveries, you know the impact of these expenses to your bottom line. The costs are completely avoidable and can be solved with a simple call to your sales representative at your oxygen therapy manufacturer. Selecting the right product and focusing on discharge planning and patient education can pay large dividends in giving the patient an easier transition from the hospital (or clinic) to home. If you are successful in educating the patient about their post discharge self-care, you not only potentially help improve treatment compliance, but also will strengthen the long-term relationship between you—the HME provider—and your valuable referral sources.

Recently, CAIRE developed a comprehensive O2 Discharge Program in an effort to showcase our Eclipse 5 single source portable oxygen concentrator. Because the Eclipse 5 is a single-oxygen system, it can be operated 24/7 allowing the homecare provider the ability to deploy one device at the point of discharge, giving them flexibility to schedule their in-home consultation at a later date, avoiding after hours, weekend and inclement weather visits—all of which will help improve the bottom line. Training provided by the manufacturer will help ensure that the HME provider's staff is prepared for the patient set-ups as well as the discussions with the clinicians. Partnering with the right manufacturer, and selecting the right single-source oxygen solution will enable the homecare company to continue to provide exemplary care to patients during their critical time of need, help improve referral sources and patient outcomes, and may also improve operational efficiency and profitability.

George Coppola is director of marketing at CAIRE Inc. Reach him at george.coppola@chartindustries.com