HME Business Podcast

Have you been wondering about Round 2024 of competitive bidding? You're not alone.  AAHomecare's  Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Kim Brummett sat down with HMEB during this week's  Medtrade West  event to discuss how the next round of competitive bidding might play out, what CMS might do, and where the program might be headed in the future.

HME industry advocates are currently focused on two pivotal legislative fights: advancing H.R. 6641 and working with Senate contacts on approaches to preserve the current 75/25 blended rate for non-rural, non-CBA suppliers beyond the end of the public health emergency (PHE). Jay Witter, the senior vice president for public policy at the American Association for Homecare explains why both efforts a...

With Covid-19 on the wane, Medtrade West is returning to Arizona's Phoenix Convention Center April 4-6, and the show offers some new features and creative tweaks on existing show content. In this episode, Medtrade Show Director York Schwab pulls back the curtain on the upcoming event to offer a sneak peek at what the conference and exposition has to offer this year.

How well do you understand CMS's Covid-19 vaccine mandate for providers and suppliers? Are you sure? It turns out that, while the agency didn't directly include DMEPOS suppliers and DME pharmacies, those businesses might still need to comply with the guidelines if they want to keep doing business with certain referral partners. Sandy Canally, RN, founder and CEO of accrediting organization The Com...

Covid-19 has forced a lot of change when it comes to respiratory services. How has the situation evolved for oxygen and respiratory providers and the clinical care team? John Medina, RRT, director of sales at  CAIRE Inc. , and David Lyman RRT, RRT-SDS, vice president of  VGM Respiratory , join the podcast to explore topics such as new variants, telehealth, frequent of RT check-ins, the pandemic's...

HME providers initially got a brief break from Medicare claims audits during the Covid public health emergency, but after resuming audits, the HME industry will face expanded audit challenges in 2022. And Medicare isn't the only source of claims audits, either. Audit expert Wayne van Halem, president and founder of the audit consulting firm The van Halem Group , discusses what providers can expect...

Sleep therapy is all about reinforcing patients' compliance with their care, and the primary way to achieve that lies in ensuring they have the right mask for them. Comfort remains king. But there are several patient factors that mask fitting traditionally hasn't taken into account, but probably should have. Well a new technology, MaskFit AR, is trying to change that. Cox Tan-Ngo, the CEO of A R M...

For the past 18 months, only one trend has impacted the entirety of the HME industry, and of course, that trend has been COVID-19. Joining the podcast to discuss how the pandemic has affected accreditation for HME providers are José Domingos, the president and CEO of the Accreditation Commission for Health Care ( ACHC ), and Tim Safley, the program director for ACHC. Both guests explain how their...

Staffing solutions are becoming an increasingly important part of how HME providers run their business. They let providers more nimbly expand and contract their staff based on referral partner and patient needs while pursuing new market opportunities. One new staffing solution is rtNOW , a company that provides telehealth staffing of RTs. Chuck Stadler Jr, the president and CEO of rtNOW joins the...

Equipment management sits at the heart of nearly everything HME providers do, but recent trends such as Covid-19 and the increased emphasis on infection control have made this fundamental business process all the more critical. Founder and CEO of the accreditation organization  The Compliance Team  Sandra Canally, RN, discusses what goes into effective HME equipment management, why it's crucial fr...

What happens when your best employee isn't exactly your employee? HME staffing firm  Tactical Back Office was born out of an HME provider seeking a new way to create flexible, scalable teams for HME providers. The goal was to find staff that could be relied on to carry out back-office and front-office functions at top performance levels for the long haul. The result is what Tactical Back Office fo...

HME providers and accrediting organizations share a common dilemma: Providers are trying to fill new and unique care segments as well as rapidly take advantage of market opportunities. They also face a constant flood change management challenges. At the same time, those providers still need to get accredited. So how do accreditation standards become similarly flexible to help providers remain stra...

Any sleep provider will tell you resupply is a critical component of patient care and therapy outcomes, as well as a fundamental element of their business performance. They'll also tell you it is a costly and complex workflow desperately in need of as much automation as possible. Enter "no-touch resupply." Michael Lorenz, vice president of resupply software for  Brightree , joins the podcast to de...

As the delta variant of COVID-19 makes a greater and greater impact on American healthcare, post-acute care and HME providers are really starting to feel its presence, particularly on the supply side of the industry.  Spectrum Medical Supply  CEO Steve Ackerman explains how, just as the delta variant is starting to impact post-acute care, HME providers' costs have really started ramping up. What c...

While COVID-19 ramped up the need for telehealth and remote connectivity for both HME patients and remote and distributed HME workforces, the need for security HME providers' data predated the pandemic. Jerry Dennany, Chief Technology Officer for Brightree , discusses the factors that have been driving the need for more remote security, the increasing number of healthcare data attacks, and how pro...

The year marks the big year for DMEPOS accreditation renewal for HME providers, and a major part of that process is the site survey. And, when it comes to those site surveys, there are some common pitfalls providers need to know to avoid. Matt Gruskin, credentialing director for the Board of Certification and Accreditation , points out regularly occurring site survey issues that can be easily prev...

The return of  Medtrade West  also saw the return of the  American Association for Homecare Update , in which HME Business's David Kopf, as well as the audience, queried the association's President and CEO Tom Ryan, along with Vice Presidents Jay Witter, Kim Brummett and Laura Williard, on a broad range of topics. For folks who couldn't make the update, HMEB I circled back with Witter, Brummett an...

As U.S. healthcare emerges from the COVID-19 PHE, HME providers face five referral sales challenges that they must overcome if they want to succeed in the "new normal." HME sales expert Ty Bello, CEO of HME sales coaching and consulting firm  Team@Work , reviews those challenges and then outlines multiple ways HME providers can tackle each. If you're looking for concrete sales strategies for the h...

Brace yourself! COVID-19's impact on U.S. healthcare might be fading, but not the patient demand. If anything, you can expect increased patient needs and a broadening set of requirements from your referral partners. Are you ready? Founder and CEO of The Compliance Team Sandra Canally, RN, is seeing some serious pent-up demand in the marketplace. Pair that with new services and capabilities that HM...

HME businesses have adapted to a considerable number of changes during COVID-19, but what ones will stick around for the long haul? Tim Safley, the program director for the Accreditation Commission for Health Care ( ACHC ) has been in an interesting position when it comes to helping providers integrate new policies and procedures into their operations and workflows. He talks about the major change...

When the COVID-19 pandemic, one sector of post-acute care that got hit hard was complex rehab, but there was an silver lining: CMS and other payers relaxed the guidelines around telehealth as a means to carrying out patient evaluations. One company that has been at the fore of that technology is TeleHealth Clinical Evals, and its CEO, Bill Paul, joins the podcast to talk about the importance of te...

Worried about audits? Maybe you should be. After hitting pause on claims audits during the COVID-19 PHE, CMS surprised everyone last fall by announcing it would resume those audits. Well now CMS has started restarting audits and audit expert Wayne van Halem, president of The van Halem Group , joins the podcast to discuss how CMS's resumption of TPE, RAC and other audits programs is progressing, as...

One segment of HME that has typified the entire industry's experience with handling the disease has been sleep therapy. Now that we are in the middle of the vaccine rollout, sleep providers — like all HME providers — are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. What happens next? Gary Sheehan, MBA, CEO of  Spiro Health , who has shared his insights and perspectives during the pandemic, rejoins...

If providers learned anything from COVID-19, it's that they need a more robust and professionally aggressive selling process. Ty Bello, CEO of HME sales coaching and consulting firm  Team@Work , explains why the new normal for HME sales will be grounded in market data and customer relationship management. He discusses how HME market data has grown will be the driving force helping HME sales teams...

When it comes to inventory management and equipment maintenance, HME providers contend with a unique dilemma: they have a considerable amount of inventory overhead, and much of it is out in the field. Simply put, where's their stuff? And as COVID-19 has driven treatment into the home setting, that challenge the issue has only gotten larger. Industry supplier McKesson's Biomedical Solutions busines...