Quipt eyes national status

CINCINNATI – While Quipt Home Medical has been laser-focused on respiratory for the past several years, a recent contract with Cardinal Health at-Home will give the company a competitive foothold in the supplies market on a national scale, says CEO Greg Crawford. 

“We get a lot of inquiries for other supplies, whether they be incontinence, urologicals or ADLs – anything that a respiratory or other patient would need – and we do sell those at our (brick-and-mortar) locations,” he said. “We were looking for a supplier that could bring that distribution to the (patient’s) doorstep, so we can compete with the Internet and insurance allowables and still make it profitable and also provide a great service for the patient.” 

Quipt also recently inked a national contract with UnitedHealthcare that it says will help it expand into new states. 

Focused identity 

Quipt originally launched in 2010 as Patient Home Monitoring, providing primarily respiratory services, medical supplies, power mobility and Coumadin home monitoring. In 2017, it spun off Viemed Healthcare, its non-invasive home ventilator business, followed by a reorganization of its management team in 2018. 

“When we took over, we had to define who we were going to be,” says Crawford. “We had really great respiratory programs and that’s when we really chose to focus on that. We have created a full-service clinical respiratory company offering a full suite of products and services, with about 80% of our mix respiratory, including sleep.” 

Value-add 

Today, the provider, which rebranded as Quipt in 2021, operates in nearly 100 locations – many rolled up through acquisitions – and serves about 200,000 patients annually. 

“As we’ve grown, we’ve built out our infrastructure and that’s when we started to shift more into DME,” says Crawford. “I won’t say we go out and market ourselves as DME, but as it comes, we are taking those orders and fulfilling those for our referral sources.” 

Increased scale 

Looking ahead to the future, Crawford says he expects Quipt to stick pretty much to its current growth formula. 

“We believe we’ve got a great service model, and I believe we’re going to continue down the same path,” he said. “We could look at different verticals within the business. Things are going very well, capitalizing on both organic and inorganic opportunities for us to continue to scale this business into a national provider.”