Tag: Change
Poll: COVID precautions push permanent business changes
March 19, 2021Theresa Flaherty, Managing Editor
YARMOUTH, Maine – More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, HME providers, like many businesses, have adapted to new ways of doing business and many of those changes will become permanent, say respondents to a recent HME Newspoll.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents say they plan to make certain changes permanent, including offering drop-shipping or curbside pick-up of equipment.
“In the past, we would do curbside if a customer asked,”...
CMS modernizes Stark Law
November 23, 2020HME News Staff
WASHINGTON - CMS has finalized a number of changes to the Stark Law, including new permanent exemptions for value-based arrangements, in a 627-page final rule set to be published in the Federal Register on Dec. 2.
The exemptions will allow physicians and other health care providers to design and enter into value-based arrangements without fear that legitimate activities to coordinate and improve the quality of care for patients and lower costs would violate the physician self-referral law,...
Better to swim with the sharks
February 28, 2017Theresa Flaherty, Managing Editor
It's a chilly today, here in Las Vegas, but here's hoping things warm up with the official start of Medtrade Spring '17 this morning.
I actually flew into Vegas on Saturday. I figured if I had to spend a whole day crammed onto a plane, anyway, I might as well take an extra today to enjoy some sun and relative warmth—two things that are often in limited supply in our neck of the woods.
On Sunday morning, before all the vacationing families could descend on the Shark Reef Aquarium (it's just...
CMS finalizes changes to bid program
October 28, 2016HME News Staff
WASHINGTON - CMS issued a final rule Oct. 28 with a number of changes to competitive bidding, including establishing bid limits for future rounds of the program based on the fee schedule rates before they were adjusted.
“This will avoid a downward trend where the new, lower bid limits apply to each subsequent round of bidding based on fee schedule rates adjusted using bidding information from the previous round,” the agency stated. “This will help enhance the long-term viability...
What's change got you doing?
August 3, 2016Liz Beaulieu, Editor
There has been a rash of companies buying other companies, as well as public companies reporting their latest financial results, in the past week, and reacting to change is a recurring theme behind all of their activity.
When I was writing up an item on Cape Medical Supply buying New England Medical Homecare, this quote from Cape Medical President and CEO Gary Sheehan jumped out at me: “As we continue to explore our strategic options for succeeding in a changing and crowded healthcare market,...
Mirror, mirror on the wall
May 19, 2016Liz Beaulieu, Editor
The goal of this year's HME News Business Summit is to change the way you see the HME industry and, more importantly, your business.
To help us do that, we've brought in some important “outsiders.”
Dr. Patrick Cawley is the CEO of the Medical University of South Carolina. As the person who oversees all clinical matters for the health system and its affiliates, he knows the value of outcomes. He believes you can help him do his job, and so do we.
Brain Holzer, president of a division of...
Use 'The Force' to evolve in growing market
March 3, 2016HME News Staff
If you're anything like my family, making a visit to the local cinema to watch the new Star Wars film was a must-do. My three boys were fascinated with the movie and characters, just as the original Star Wars had captured imaginations a generation ago. Based on the enormous box office numbers, it's still a great time to be in the Star Wars business, just as it was when the original movie premiered in 1977.
The original Star Wars debut coincided with the beginning of the modern DME business. The Health...
The post-acute pack: How can HME providers come out on top?
September 18, 2015Liz Beaulieu, Editor
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Post-acute care, including HME, is the Wild Wild West of health care, and that's a good thing, several speakers said last week at the 11th annual HME News Business Summit.In response to government pressure, hospitals are flooding their systems with data (think zettabytes) and changing their delivery models (think value vs. fee for service), but where and how they plug in post-acute care, while an increasing priority, is still very much to be determined.“It's a big opportunity,”...
AOPA pulls out all the stops
August 20, 2015HME News Staff
WASHINGTON - The American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association is organizing stakeholders to fight proposed changes to coverage requirements to prostheses.
AOPA has commissioned print and TV advertising in the Washington, D.C., area; it's arranging for top officials and a Boston Marathon survivor to attend, and hopefully speak at, a DME MAC open meeting on Aug. 26; and it's organizing more than 100 amputees to converge at CMS headquarters for a protest later that same day.
Also part...
Only the paranoid survive
August 7, 2015Liz Beaulieu, Editor
I had a great call this week with the panelists for our “Rise of the Disrupters” panel at the upcoming HME News Business Summit in Nashville. I think this session, alone, will be worth the price of admission.
When I asked panelist Dan Afrasiabi whether being a disrupter was something that came naturally to him or something he had to work hard at, he said it was the latter.
“To borrow from Andy Grove from Intel, 'Only the paranoid survive,'” he said. “That's how I do...