A Grand Plan

The retail home medical equipment business requires patience, verve and creativity — even in the best of times. But opening a new store in the middle of a hard winter and planning a grand opening while gearing up for competitive bidding definitely adds a whole new dimension to stress. You have to have game.

Two years ago, Bridgeville, Pa.-based AdvaCare Home Services defined the strategies and tactics the company needed to score. With an eye to further developing both its referral and customer bases, AdvaCare developed a game plan with a marketing strategy that included store branding, design, manufacturer support, promotions, advertising and Web strategy, along with publicity outreach.

It was a key maneuver in positioning the company to respond in a rapidly changing HME environment, and it paid off with a bottom line that grew by triple digits.

A New Direction

In 2006, all the signs pointed to Pittsburgh as a likely candidate as one of the initial top 10 competitive bidding areas. That was a major concern to AdvaCare, a 10-year-old firm with three locations in the Pittsburgh major metropolitan area, including Bridgeville, Beaver and Aspinwall. So in a proactive move, Tammy Zelenko, CEO and president, made a strategic decision to alter the course of the business.

Competitive bidding, increasing competition and the company's own referral and customer input provided stimuli for new ideas, insight and direction, Zelenko says. AdvaCare had built a reliable brand with a strong referral and patient base over the past decade. But it was clear there were untapped product and service opportunities that could not be fulfilled in its Beaver location.

“Our three locations have some retail but are primarily respiratory, HME and offices. The Beaver location had 900 square feet, with office space and limited retail in bath safety and compression hosiery,” Zelenko explains. “My original thought was to get a presence in the community near the local hospital, but the opportunity arose to expand with a storefront near the original location.”

So, believing that a more visible storefront downtown would increase awareness of AdvaCare and build new patronage, Zelenko decided to capitalize on that opportunity and expand the Beaver showroom with retail products and services.

Following a strategic decision “to proactively change our payer base,” Zelenko says, “we structured our efforts to emphasize our strengths: respiratory services, home medical equipment and compression hosiery.