>From HomeCare Magazine's circulation of more than 17,000 home health >professionals, we told our computer system to random selected 1,500 home >medical equipment businesses. We then sent them an anonymous survey about >their companies and their compensation packages for 18 different job >functions. In total, 349 businesses replied.

In this report, the Ranges figures indicate the lowest and highest responses received. The 25th Percentile figure is higher than 25 percent of the responses, and the 75th Percentile figure is higher than 75 percent of the responses. The Median is the figure that is in the exact middle of all responses: Half are less than it, and half are more than it. The average is the sum of all figures divided by the number of figures gathered.

Note: In the interests of being concise (and visually spare), we rounded off some figures to the nearest whole number. In a few cases, this yields total results that add up to 99 or 101.

Kane Consulting, Buffalo Grove, Ill., compiled, tabulated and analyzed HomeCare's 1999 Salary Survey results.