HMESA Sets e-Commerce Industry Standards

E-commerce, encompassing everything from electronic ordering to just-in-time inventory management, has improved supply-chain logistics in various industries--but not HME, at least not on a wide scale. Fragmented and made up largely of small businesses, the industry as a whole has yet to jump on the electronic commerce bandwagon.

The industry’s technology gurus had this in mind when they formed the Home Medical Equipment Standards Association (HMESA) last year. With the ambitious plan of bringing HME into the e-commerce world, the group set out to smooth the transfer of information between manufacturers and providers by working out standard product naming conventions, product hierachy and units of measure.

Today, a provider’s data-entry employee may take a manufacturer’s new pricing sheet from the fax machine and enter the information into the company’s internal software. The process can be time-consuming and, because update notices may only come once or twice a year, inaccurate. Manufacturers continually change product prices, warranties and other variables, so updates entered manually into a company’s back-end system may be obsolete before the employee finishes typing.

But what if that data could be updated every time a provider orders product? Electronic ordering may make it possible. Every time a provider logs on to a manufacturer’s or distributor’s server to place an order or check on order status, that server could automatically download product update information to the provider’s system.

To bring this kind of convenience to HME, however, all manufacturers need to classify products the same way. Currently, for example, one manufacturer might classify a walker as an "ambulatory aid" while another might place it in its own category called "walkers."

But a new universal HME product classification system, or schema, ratified by HMESA members in the spring and revised twice since, is designed to eliminate the inconsistencies. It identifies six major market areas--home care furnishings, rehab, respiratory, personal care/patient aids, sleep and supplies—then subcategorizes each into market segments, classes and product groups. The system also creates standard product numbers, essentially UPCs tailored for home medical equipment, to be used industry-wide.