Features
2008 Forecast SURVEY
For the second year in a row, home medical equipment providers are hunkering down as they plan for the New Year, and it shows.
With the pervasive unrest stirred by competitive bidding and the uncertainty of Medicare's reimbursements, purchase intentions have fallen across the board for the products on HME companies' 2008 shopping list. The most popular products haven't changed — manual wheelchairs, beds, ambulatory aids, bath safety products and nebulizers. But fewer providers participating in HomeCare's 2008 Forecast Survey said they plan to buy them:
Other results show fewer providers than in last year's survey said they would purchase CPAPs/bi-levels, -7.8 percent; oxygen concentrators, -6.6 percent; bariatric products, -7 percent; and power wheelchairs, -7.6 percent.
| 2008 | 2007 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual wheelchairs | 70.1% | 81.5% | -11.4 |
| Beds | 66.7 | 76.8 | -10.1 |
| Ambulatory aids | 66.5 | 77.3 | -10.8 |
| Bath safety products | 64.7 | 75.1 | -10.4 |
| Nebulizers | 64.3 | 76.5 | -12.2 |
Some products will show a lesser decline: ramps by only 2.9 percent and diabetes products by 2.3 percent, for example. But providers said they will be buying fewer products overall. The average decrease for the 35-item shopping list as a whole was 6.2 percent.
In spite of their reimbursement jitters, the vast majority of providers (86.7 percent) believe company revenues will increase or at least hold steady next year. Only 9.9 percent predicted their income would decrease.
Nevertheless, providers said they are taking measures to reduce expenses. In fact, “keeping costs under control,” they said, will be their No. 1 challenge. To increase operating efficiencies, 59 percent said they now have a DME software package, and almost a third (30.8 percent) said they are using a document imaging system.
To hold delivery costs in check, 40.2 percent said they already have or plan to limit deliveries in company-owned vehicles, and 27 percent said they have or will limit delivery hours.
