“Keep up” is what one CEO of a multi national corporation told his team at their annual all hands webinar.  He went on to say, “Our business environment is changing and we have to adjust our business practices to stay relevant and in business!”  Over the past 10 years the HME market has endured an all out assault by CMS and commercial insurance companies.  Any HME provider still in business today can attest to the fact that they have had to endure:

1. Compliance with new supplier standards
2. Become and stay accredited
3. Undergo pre-enrollment and revalidation screening procedures
4. Obtain surety bonds
5. Open their doors to NSC for post-enrollment site visits when CMS or NSC believes that the supplier may be involved in fraudulent or abusive activities
6. Criminal Background Checks of HME Owners
7. Fingerprinting – the new fingerprinting requirement also applies to all owners, authorized officials, or managing employees of a DMEPOS supplier
8. Participate in competitive bidding and “win” or be excluded from distributing certain product categories
9. Rural providers being subjected to reduced reimbursement rates comparable to current competitive bidding rates

To make matters worse, managed care organizations are actively and purposefully closing their provider panels to HME business owners resulting in HME owners having to turn away customers because they lack the necessary contracts.

Don’t give up

So what is an HME provider to do?  How can they survive in this hostile business environment?

The obvious answer is to develop strategies to allow you to enter into new markets that are not subjected to competitive bidding or commercial insurance company network acceptance. However, this is not the focus of this blog  post because we all know that revenue is important and shrinking reimbursements are a big problem, but let me draw your attention to one simple question.  How are HME owners keeping up?

Keep Up

The biggest issue facing an HME owners continued survival today is “Keeping up” with environmental changes by becoming savvy technology adopters.  On the horizon all business owners are facing increased minimum wages in the range of $15 per hour which could have a profound impact on an operations ability to manage its administrative paperwork and claims process. Another issue is many HME organizations are doing business on paper, have no system of record for managing patient content and demographic information, utilizing antiquated free billing solutions that require massive amounts of rework to manage rentals and refills, or have poorly trained staff who make mistakes that create instability in the organization.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, finding a lost document will cost a company $122 on average. It is also estimated that 7.5% of all company documents are lost completely. Let’s assume your company works with 10,000 documents – an extremely light figure. That would mean, about 750 of those documents are doomed to be lost, ultimately costing your company around $91,500. Plus, if you had to recreate any lost documents, the time and supplies involved would make that number jump well over the $100,000 mark.  That fact is there are many metrics like paper loss that go unchecked, unresolved and result in inflated overhead.

Is your business running at peak efficiency?  Are you working with older technology designed for the days when HME business was booming?  Are you still doing things the way you did them in the past?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on…

Upgrade correctly

One major key is automation of manual business practices that decrease business waste due to human error, rework, absenteeism, process inconsistency, etc…  We know the best workflow is only as good as the tools and people who are executing it. So let’s take a look at the future of HME business by exploring the key to success “BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION.”

Here are some 5 key areas your business needs to begin the process of automation:

1. A business management system (BMS) that provides a complete 360° approach that automates your businesses revenue cycle.
2. Your BMS must be cost-effective so that it does not become a financial burden to your operation.
3. Your BMS must include services like document management, faxing, eligibility verification, automation in the areas of rental equipment and supply refills, integrated inventory management systems that track inventory in real time, integrated compliance features that enable you manage your accreditation without paper.
4. Choose a BMS vendor who is willing to partner with you by providing you customized solutions that help you meet your business objectives at low or no out-of-pocket cost.
5. Look for a BMS that is intuitive to your staff and yourself so you are not exposed to the high cost of retraining new staff caused by employee turnover or business expansion.

Remember “Cash is King” so focus your attention on automating your processes that are linked to or impact your revenue cycle. Doing so will allow you to “Keep up” and survive today’s hostile business environment.

If you’re interested in finding out how bflow can help your business “Keep Up” sign up for a one on one free consultation  , Try bflow free for 14 days without risk or review our pricing so you can see how afordable bflow is.

If you’re serious about automating, use promo code [KEEP-UP] to get 40% OFF your first year’s pricing on bflow business management system.